AFRICAN-AMERICAN ARTISTS OF LOS ANGELES:
Ruth G. Waddy
Interviewed by Karen Anne Mason
Completed under the auspices
of the
Oral History Program
University of California
Los Angeles
Copyright © 1993
The Regents of the University of California
\-
COPYRIGHT LAW
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17,
United States Code) governs the making of photocopies
or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under
certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and
archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other
reproduction. One of these specified conditions is
that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used
for any purpose other than private study, scholarship,
or research. If a user makes a request for, or later-
uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in
excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for
copyright infringement. This institution reserves the
right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its
judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve
violation of copyright law.
RESTRICTIONS ON THIS INTERVIEW
None.
LITERARY RIGHTS AND QUOTATION
This manuscript is hereby made available for research
purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publication, are reserved to
the University Library of the University of California,
Los Angeles. No part of the manuscript may be quoted
for publication without the written permission of the
University Librarian of the University of California,
Los Angeles.
CONTENTS
Biographical Sununary vi
Interview History viii
TAPE NUMBER: I, Side One (July 26, 1991) 1
Childhood in Lincoln, Nebraska--Family
background- -Parents move to Minneapolis--
Enters University of Minnesota--Working her way
through school as a live-in maid--Quits school
and moves to Chicago.
TAPE NUMBER: I, Side Two (July 26, 1991) 21
Meets Richard Wright in the Federal Writers
Project--Cultural life of Chicago in the 1930s--
Move to Los Angeles- -Working as a riveter at
Douglas Aircraft Corporation during World War II.
TAPE NUMBER: II, Side One (July 27, 1991) 35
More on working as a riveter--Studies ceramics--
Admissions clerk for Los Angeles County Hospital--
Diagnosed as having epilepsy--Idea of organizing
the first juried show of African- American artists
in Los Angeles--Social value of art.
TAPE NUMBER: II, Side Two (July 27, 1991) 54
Rebuffed by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art--
Creation of Art West Associated--Idea of
collecting prints by African-American artists--
Traveling throughout the country searching for
prints--Criterion for selecting the prints--
Building a personal collection- -Meeting artists--
Marriage and divorce.
TAPE NUMBER: III, Side One (July 27, 1991) 75
More on cross-country, print-collecting trip--
Waddy's prints--Taking classes at Otis Art
Institute--Learns to talk about art--Visit to the
Soviet Union in 1965--Sightseeing in Russia.
IV
TAPE NUMBER: III, Side Two (July 27, 1991) 96
Reflections on the sameness of people--Traveling
in Europe- -Commentary on Waddy's art works--
Creating a market for African-American art —
Experimental methods — Africa and African-
Americans — More discussion of Waddy's prints.
TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side One (July 28, 1991) 116
Waddy's artistic style — African-American-owned
art galleries in Los Angeles--Coediting Black
Artists on Art with Samella Lewis--Activism and
militancy--More on the artists involved in Art
West Associated- -Rising market value of artwork
by blacks--Noah Purifoy.
TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side Two (July 28, 1991) 137
Issue of whether there is a "black aesthetics" —
Recipient of honors--Philosophy of giving--
Difference between training and thinking--
Starting the Waddy Shower Cap Company.
Index.
155
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
PERSONAL HISTORY:
Bom: January 7, 1909, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Education: University of Minnesota, 1927-28; Famous
Artists Home Study Course, 1962; Otis Art Institute,
1965.
Spouse: William H. Waddy, one child.
CAREER HISTORY:
Domestic service, 1930s and occasionally thereafter.
Riveter, Douglas Aircraft Corporation, 1942-45.
Admissions clerk, Los Angeles County Hospital, ca. 1946--.
Clerk, Los Angeles County, ca. 1959.
Founder, Art West Associated, 1962.
Printmaker, 1962--.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
"Negro History Calendar Art Competition, " Safety Savings
and Loan, Los Angeles, 1964.
"The Negro in American Art," Dickson Art Galleries, UCLA,
Los Angeles, 1966.
"New Perspectives in Black Art, " Oakland Museum, Oakland,
California, 1967.
"Negro History Week Art Exhibit, " Independence Square, Los
Angeles, 1968.
"Prints by Ruth Waddy, " Scott United Methodist Chruch,
Pasadena, California, 1976.
"A Vibrant Force, " Our Children Museum of African American
Art, Los Angeles, 1979.
vi
"Ruth Waddy, A Retrospective," Gallery Plus, Los Angeles,
1986.
She has also exhibited at the University of California,
Davis (1966), the Fine Art Gallery, San Diego (1967), and
the Impressions/Expressions Studio Museum, Harlem, New
York (1983).
AWARDS :
National Association of College Women, Los Angeles, 1963.
Angeles Mesa Young Womens Christian Association, Los
Angeles, 1964.
United Nations cultural exchange to the Soviet Union,
1966.
National Conference of Artists, Virginia State University,
Petersburg, Virginia, 1968.
Our Authors Study Club, Los Angeles, 1972.
National Conference of Artists, Pacific Region, Berkeley,
California, 1976.
League of Allied Artists, Los Angeles, 1981.
California Afro-American Museum, 1983.
Vesta Award, Women's Building, Los Angeles, 1986.
Life Works Plaque Award, National Artists Conference, Los
Angeles, 1987.
Honorary Doctor of Arts, Otis Art Institute, Parsons
School of Design, New School of Social Research, New York,
New York, 1987.
PUBLICATIONS:
Research for Theodore V. Roelof-Lanner ed.. Prints by
American Negro Artists. Los Angeles: Cultural Exchange
Center, 1965.
Ruth G. Waddy and Samella Lewis eds.. Black Artists on
Art. Los Angeles: Contemporary Crafts, 1969.
vii
INTERVIEW HISTORY
INTERVIEWER:
Karen Anne Mason, B.A., English, Slnunons College; M.A.,
Art History, University of California, Los Angeles.
TIME AND SETTING OF INTERVIEW:
Place: Waddy's home, San Francisco, California.
Dates, length of sessions: July 26, 1991 (61 minutes);
July 27, 1991 (173); July 28, 1991 (78).
Total number of recorded hours: 5.20
Persons present dviring interview: Waddy, Mason, and
Waddy's daughter, Maryom Ana Al-Wadi, intermittently.
CONDUCT OF INTERVIEW:
This interview is one of a series on African-American art
and artists in Los Angeles. This oral history project
gathers and preserves interviews with African-American
artists who have created significant works and others in
the Los Angeles metropolitan area who have worked to
expand exhibition opportunities and public support for
African-American visual culture.
The interview is organized chronologically, beginning with
Waddy's childhood in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Minneapolis,
Minnesota, and continuing on through her preserving and
publicizing the work of African-American printmakers.
Major topics covered include the publication of Prints by
American Negro Artists and Black Artists on Art, the
creation of Art West Associated, her own work as a painter
and linoleum block designer, and the black art scene in
Southern California.
EDITING:
Steven J. Novak, editor, edited the interview. He checked
the verbatim transcript of the interview against the
original tape recordings, edited for punctuation,
paragraphing, and spelling, and verified proper names.
Words and phrases inserted by the editor have been
bracketed.
Vlll
Waddy reviewed the transcript. She verified proper names
and made minor corrections and additions.
Novak also prepared the table of contents, biographical
summary, interview history, and index.
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:
The original tape recordings of the interview are in the
university archives and are available under the
regulations governing the use of permanent noncurrent
records of the university. Records relating to the
interview are located in the office of the UCLA Oral
History Program.
IX
TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JULY 26, 1991
MASON: Today is July 26, and I'm talking with Ruth Waddy,
in San Francisco. Ms. Waddy, could you tell us when and
where you were born and also give us your full name?
WADDY: I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, January 7, 1909,
and my full name is really Willanna Ruth Gilliam. Willanna
was my first name because my mother-- I was the oldest, the
first child. My mother's first name is Willie [Goran
Gilliam], and her second name was Anna. But when I went to
school, the children called me "Banana!" So I asked her if
I could go by my second name, Ruth. She said yes. From
then on I was Ruth Gilliam. Now, when I got married I
didn't want to drop the maiden name, so I go by Ruth G.
Waddy.
MASON: I see. And what's your father's name?
WADDY: John Moses Gilliam.
MASON: Do you know when they came to Nebraska,
approximately? Had they been--?
WADDY: They had been married four or five years prior to
my mother becoming pregnant with me, and they were in
Butte, Montana, at the time, near the time of my-- And she
became pregnant with me. But my father was very suspicious
of staying there because there were no African-Americans in
Butte, Montana, at that time. So he decided to move to
Lincoln. And another thing, my father always liked to buy
wherever he lived. He liked to buy his house and some land
around it because he was a strong believer in gardening
for, you know, tomatoes and peppers and things like that.
He liked to have vegetables.
MASON: Is that what he did for a living?
WADDY: No. He was a waiter. That's how he happened to
know the Northwest of the country so well, because he did
what many African-American men did in those times--run on
the road. But he was not a porter, he was a waiter.
^4AS0N: This was on a train?
WADDY: Yes. On trains.
MASON: Did your mother work also?
WADDY: No. My mother never worked. In fact, when I was a
baby until-- Well, when I was born, I had two younger
sisters, Margaret [Gilliam Harrison] and Gladys [Gilliam
Little] . Margaret is about a year and three months younger
than I, and Gladys is almost three years younger than I
am. Gladys was born in 1912. Margaret was born in 1910.
She was a middle sister; Margaret was the middle sister.
And Mama hired — It was during the period of a lot of
immigrants coming to the United States- -when the immigrants
came to the States, I mean, a lot of them from Europe. My
mother knew how to speak German, so she hired-- They had a
German help, you know, to help my mother do the--
MASON: How did she happen to know how to speak German? Do
you know?
WADDY: Well, my mother seemed to be very well educated,
although she was an only child. Her mother died in
childbirth. She was raised by her grandparents.
MASON: Was she educated abroad, do you know?
WADDY: No. She was born in Fort Scott, Kansas.
MASON: Same place as Gordon Parks.
WADDY: But she was raised and she talks about Leavenworth,
[Kansas]. I guess that's where she met my father. I don't
know. Maybe so, because I know the Gilliams had property
in Leavenworth. I never asked her, and when I thought
about asking her she was gone. But she must have come from
a sort of upper-class family because she put-- In those
days, young women had hope chests. A hope chest meant that
you put away things in preparation for your wedding, your
future home .
MASON: Like linens and china and things like that.
WADDY: Yes, yes. She put quite a store by sterling silver
and linen tablecloths and very fine things. We always had
a dining room and a linen tablecloth, and each of us had
our own napkin and napkin ring with our names on it.
MASON: Oh. Did she play the piano?
WADDY: Yes, she did, and she sang. She had a beautiful
singing voice, but none of us inherited that. But we did
inherit a love for grand opera. She sang grand opera.
h4AS0N: Where did she sing? Just locally?
WADDY: I know that she sang in Leavenworth, Kansas,
because my uncle-- My father, on the other hand, there were
eight in his family, girls and boys. Uncle Elijah
[Gilliam] often remarked that it was strange that none of
us had the voice my mother had. So it must have been in
Leavenworth, Kansas. And where else, I don't know. She
never did say. When I thought about asking her about those
things, she wasn't here--she had died.
MASON: What year did your mother die?
WADDY: I don't remember. I don't remember dates of-- I
remember when my father died, because I was graduating from
the eighth grade. I was thirteen years old. I remember
that . But I don ' t remember my age .
MASON: So he died before your mother?
WADDY: Yes, many years before.
MASON: Did you know much about your father's family
background?
WADDY: Yes. Uncle Elijah wrote a sort of mini-
autobiography for his daughter [Anne Gilliam Hare] , and I
have a copy of it someplace. Uncle Elijah was the youngest
of the eight children. My father was next to the oldest- -
of the boys, anyway. I remember Aunt Jane [Gilliam] , my
mother saying that she was sort of a disciplinarian. She
4
never had any children, though. Uncle Henry [Gilliam]
did. Uncle Henry was the oldest boy, and he had some
children, but I don't remember how many. My father, since
he ran on the road and he liked the Northwest, when my
mother and he were married, that's where they lived. In
those days, there weren't very many African-Americans in
that part of the country. That's why it was a German
immigrant who hadn't learned how to speak English yet.
That's why my mother hired her, I think.
MASON: I see. So what kind of education did your parents
try to give their children? Did they try to give you music
lessons?
WADDY: Yes, yes, my mother did, because, of course, being
in music, she thought it was important. I remember we had
a cardboard-- We didn't have a piano at first. The keys
were cardboard, and we had to practice on these cardboard
keys. And it was numbered, you know. The keys were
numbered E, F, G, A, B, C. Let me see. I think there were
six of them. The C starts, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. A, B,
C are the higher one's up. And then after a while we got a
piano. I liked the piano. Some woman heard me play once,
and she offered my mother-- This was after my father had
died. She said that she would see that I became a concert
pianist if my mother would let her take me. But Mama said
no, because she had heard stories about white people taking
children, and they were actually enslaving them to work for
them, you know, for years and years and years. So she said
no. But I played for the church, and I played the pipe
organ for the church. I liked the pipe organ because the
pipes are for the keys where you do your footwork.
MASON: How long did you continue to play the piano? All
your life or did you stop at some point?
WADDY: Oh, I can't play the piano now.
MASON: So it was mostly classical music then, or was it--
WADDY: Yes.
MASON: No jazz, right?
WADDY: But my youngest sister played jazz.
MASON: What did your mother think of that?
WADDY: She didn't think anything. It was quite acceptable
then. Not as acceptable as it is now, but it wasn't, you
know, forbidden.
MASON: Did you have any other incidents in your childhood
that you can think of that were important or people you met
who seemed to have influenced you?
WADDY: Nobody influenced us except certain precepts that
our parents gave us. Nothing else. Nobody, unless they
had the same ones, the same precepts. Our life was-- As
children we had-- It was very regimented. We got up early
and everybody got dressed and had breakfast at the same
time. And you either played or went to school. My mother
sewed. She made a lot of our clothes. And when we were
able, we were taught how to sew.
I remember one thing: Of course, we always, Margaret,
my middle sister, and I, would lose the needles, but not
the long ones. Sewing needles, you know. But the little
short ones, they were about two inches long, an inch and
three quarters or two inches long. We would put them down
or forget where they were, just drop them. So we were
always asking Mama for a new needle. She would give us
longer ones and longer ones. Well, longer needles were
fine as long as we didn't lose them. But, on the other
hand, you can't do very fine sewing with a coarse needle,
taking big stitches. You have to take small stitches to do
fine sewing, small holes in the material. So one day,
before we asked Mama for them, because Margaret and I asked
her, we said-- We just had a darning needle. One was
taught how to darn, too, which is quite--
MASON: Useful.
WADDY: Yes, it is. Very useful. And it looks good, too,
if it's done properly. We said, "We'll give Gladys the
darning needle." But Gladys was very sharp, my youngest
sister. We told her she could take more cloth on the
darning needle, take more stitches on the needle, because
it's longer. She said to us, "Well, if it's so good, how
is it that you're giving it to me?" She was very good at
that.
MASON: What church did your family belong to?
WADDY : Methodist .
MASON: Did you remain a Methodist?
WADDY: I don't go to any church at all. I don't-- If I--
When I went to church, I went to Methodist churches.
MASON: One usually thinks of the church being kind of a
central part of black life, and if you're not in church,
then you're sort of disconnected from a lot of activities,
social, political things. But you didn't find that that
was--
WADDY: Well, I stopped going to church after I was
grown. I was grown up and not living in Minneapolis then.
I remember particular things about Minneapolis. First
of all, when I was growing up, there weren't very many
African-Americans there. There are now and have been for
some years. But we had white neighbors, and intermarriages
were common. And the church was an important community- -
when I was growing up--for African-Americans. They didn't
call them African-Americans at that time. They were called
"colored people."
MASON: That was before "Negro."
WADDY: Yes, then Negro, and then "Afro," which doesn't mean
anything, because, as Gladys says, there's no such thing as
an Afro. What's that? That's just as bad as saying a
colored person. But African-American comes a little closer
to what Africans are here in the United States.
But the thing that I remember is that it gets dark
early in the summer and in the winter. We had to be in bed
by eight o'clock. Now, I mean in the winter it gets dark
by eight o'clock. In the summer, it's around nine o'clock
or so. But we had to go to bed at eight o'clock while it
was still light. And we would play. We lived in houses
that had an upstairs and a downstairs. The bedrooms were
upstairs. And the downstairs was the-- See, they didn't
call it a living room. It was called a front room. And
then a dining room. And then a kitchen. Maybe there might
have been an extra room, but if it was I don't remember the
name of it.
MASON: Parlor or sitting room.
WADDY: A parlor maybe, but not a sitting room. And then
we always had a basement. The houses where it snows always
had cellars or basements--a foundation- -because it's
required because of the weather, of the freezing. The
freezing of the ground.
So when we would go to bed in the summer, I would tell
stories. I had a very active imagination. I would tell
stories, fairy tales, mostly, to my younger sisters. If I
couldn't think of an ending, you know, a proper ending, I'd
just say it's "continued until tomorrow night." My mother
would be downstairs, and she could hear me talking or all
of us talking or laughing. She'd say, "Children!" She'd
call upstairs, "Be quiet! Go to sleep," almost every
night.
When my father came home from being on the road-- He
ran to Washington when we lived in Minneapolis.
Washington, the state of Washington and the state of--
What ' s that other state that ' s below the state of
Washington?
MASON: Oregon.
WADDY: Oregon. It would be eight days, from time to
time. He'd be out eight days and be in three days, you
know, in Minneapolis, three days.
One time my mother said to him- -we could hear them--
"See Jack, that's the way they do every time I send them to
bed." My father never whipped us, not one time, because he
said he was too strong and he would hit his girls too
hard. But Mama wanted him to do that. So one night he
called us downstairs, and he said to me, "I'm going to give
you three licks because you're the oldest." So he gave me,
and he counted them out, "one, two, three, " out loud like
that. And Margaret he gave two, "one, two." Of course, we
didn't cry because he just barely touched us. So we went
upstairs, and we heard Mama say, "I don't hear the children
crying." And Papa said, "You don't hear them talking
10
either, do you?"
My father was-- My sister Gladys was like him. She
always had an answer that you couldn't answer back. My
daughter [Maryom Ana Al-Wadi] does that, too. She can
always give you an answer that you can't answer back. You
have to be quiet because she's hit the nail on the head.
MASON: Yeah, well, it sounds like you had a really happy
childhood.
WADDY: It was, very, very much so. So much so that when I
was working in Los Angeles, or it was in Chicago? No, it
was in Los Angeles, at the [Los Angeles] County Hospital.
One worker said to me, "Oh, Ruth, everybody knows you had a
happy childhood. We can tell by the way you act."
[laughter] It really was, it was a very happy childhood.
All of us. And then my father died, and my mother went to
work. That's the first time that she had ever gone to work
outside of the home. Of course, she worked like a dog, I
realized after I grew up. After I got grown, I realized
how hard my mother worked at home, because she did her own
canning. In those days they canned. She did her own
laundry, and she took care of her children. If anything
happened in school, she was always up to the school to talk
to the teachers. She was an ardent church worker. She
worked hard. I didn't realize that. And she loved to
entertain. Of course, she was a very good cook, too, and
11
cooking also is hard work.
MASON: Back then especially, with no dishwashers.
WADDY: Washing, and taking care of children, three girls,
and maintaining a certain kind of standard, that's hard
work.
MASON: Did your family belong to any organizations like
the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People]?
WADDY: They never mentioned it. My father didn't think
much of any kind of organization of any color or any size
or nothing. He just thought a lot about doing things
yourself. My father was a better businessman,
businesswise, than my mother, but, of course, he was
outside the home all the time.
MASON: So how did you decide to go to college, go to the
University of Minnesota? What led you--?
WADDY: Well, first of all it was cheaper. I thought I
wanted to teach school . They had normal schools at that
time. They were schools that taught people how to become
teachers. They were called normal schools. But it cost
$30 a year. First they had semesters, and then they
changed to quarters at the university. It was $30 a
quarter then.
MASON: This was 1927-28. I'm just trying to get an idea
of how much $30 was. Was that a lot?
12
WADDY: Well, I worked while I was going to school.
Because my mother, when she worked, she made $25 a week.
MASON: I see. That gives me an idea.
WADDY: So I guess $30 was quite a bit of money then. Not
as much as $1,500 and $5,500 now.
MASON: Yeah, it's ridiculous now.
WADDY: I know. It's much higher now to go than it was
then. Let's see. [searching] I thought I had that out.
I had an old University of Minnesota bill to show you.
MASON: Oh, okay. Well, you might find that later. So in
the normal school to become a teacher you would probably
take a lot of different subjects. Instead of focusing on
one area, would you take courses in--?
WADDY: You have to decide what you're going to take before
you-- If you want to teach English, well, I guess that's
what you'd concentrate on. Or they had one called
arithmetic and then mathematics. Mathematics was not all-
inclusive. Mathematics started with algebra at that
time. I think it starts with trigonometry now.
MASON: Is that what you studied?
WADDY: No, I went through solid geometry, but not trig. I
didn't go that far.
MASON: No, but I mean, did you want to become an English
teacher or what subject did you specialize in?
WADDY: Yes, English.
13
MASON: I. can see by all your books that you love to read.
WADDY: Yeah, I love to read. Oh, yes. I read like mad.
MASON: What kinds of things did you read? Do you
remember?
WADDY: Philosophy. I liked nonfiction. I didn't like
romance and love stories much. It didn't make sense to
me. I mean, it seemed kind of silly.
MASON: Do you remember some of the philosophers that you
liked in particular? Maybe American or German or--
WADDY: No, I don't remember that. The only thing I
remember is that they never resolved anything. That kind
of put me off, too. I like things coming to a resolution,
coming to some kind of conclusion, coming to some kind of
end. I like the hands-on approach. I was always that kind
of a person. My mother called me a bull in a china shop.
I was, first of all, large for my age. And I was strong
physically, very strong, which may account for my present
condition, because I was that way all of my life, all of my
life. I may have just done too much, just done too much.
MASON: So you were interested in athletics and things like
that?
WADDY: No, I liked to swim. I liked the water, let's say,
but I never learned how to swim well. And I liked playing
tennis, and I prefer to play with men. Women didn't play
very much. They didn't play hard enough.
14
MASON: They were too busy being dainty.
WADDY: Yes. There was a great difference made between men
and women when I was growing up, more so than now, a
different kind. It wasn't as interchangeable as sometimes
it is now. I think it's more true now than it was then.
MASON: You mean that back then women were trained to stay
in the home?
WADDY: Yes, exactly. Women who liked sports or were too
athletic were called tomboys. That wouldn't wash today. I
think that today it's more true. It comes closer to the
truth than before.
MASON: You mean in terms of--
WADDY: Differentiating between the sexes.
MASON: Oh, you think things are more separate now?
WADDY: No, they were more separate then. And that wasn't
true. They are really more alike than they are different.
MASON: So were you called a tomboy back then?
WADDY: No. Because I was not athletic.
MASON: You were just strong.
WADDY: I was just strong. I was just physically strong.
MASON: Was that something that you were thinking about a
lot back then, the differences between the sexes?
WADDY : No .
MASON: Okay, and then while you were in school the
Depression broke out. The crash happened in 1929, and it
15
seems like you left school after that happened, because on
your resume it says you were in school from '27 to '28,
then '30 to '31. So did that affect your finances
immediately?
WADDY: No, because I worked while I was going to school.
I worked as a domestic and stayed on the place.
MASON: You didn't lose your job?
WADDY: What they called a live- in, which means that you
took care of the children. You stayed-- You know, instead
of having a babysitter, the maid took care of the children
so that the master and the mistress could go out to a show
or to somebody ' s house or whatever . But they had a
caretaker for the children in the house. That was part of
your duties, as well as cleaning and cooking and whatever
else. But I did it after I went to school. Like I would
get up maybe and fix breakfast and go to school. Fix
breakfast for the household and then go to school. Then,
when I came back, I would go to the store or start fixing
dinner or do some cleaning- -whatever day it was, whichever
was the more important.
MASON: When did you find time to study?
WADDY: After dinner, after the dinner dishes were done.
MASON: You must hdve been tired at the end of the day.
WADDY: No, not particularly, because I had study periods
during the time. Like, for instance, an English class
16
would be between eight thirty and ten o'clock or eight
thirty and nine thirty. From nine thirty until eleven
o'clock was free time. That was time for me to study
before an eleven o'clock class. There was time during the
day. And, of course, at night too.
MASON: So when did you — ?
WADDY: Well, my mother was cook at like a restaurant. It
was really a candy store that served meals. Ragland's
Candy Store was the name of it.
MASON: Like a Woolworth's, something like that.
WADDY: Yeah. Ragland's Candy Store was like a See's Candy
Store with very fine candy. And she decided to open up--
Mrs. Ragland was married, but she was the one who made
nearly all the decisions. Mr. Ragland just went along.
MASON: I'm sorry? Oh, he went along. He raked in the
money .
WADDY: Yeah. So my mother started it, and it was
successful. But they needed a dishwasher at one time, and
I said that I would do it so I could get out of staying in
the house as a live-in domestic. But when I saw how hard
my mother worked doing the cooking, I decided that she
worked that way because I was in school and, you know, I
had two younger sisters. She was only making $25 a week.
I decided that I didn't need to stay in school, I needed to
get a job and help her. So I told her that, and she
17
thought it would be more important for me to get a
degree. But, you know, I was in my twenties, or close to,
and felt just as grown as anybody else. So I quit school
and went to Chicago, because I knew that they had jobs for
live-in maids in Chicago. So if worst came to worst, I
could always do that, because I knew how to do it.
^4AS0N: What did you want to do in Chicago? What did you
think — ?
WADDY: I thought that I would work and save a little bit
of money so that I could go back to school, because my
mother was very unhappy about that. She was unhappy and
proud, too, you know, both of them. I told her she didn't
have to work that hard for me, because I was strong and
able. She was proud about that, but she wasn't happy about
my quitting school.
When I went to Chicago, I saw so many black people,
more than I had ever seen in my life. I fell in love with
it just as soon as I got off the train. I mean, I saw
people just walking up and down. I said, "This must be
heaven!" I said, "I'll never, ever leave Chicago, as long
as I live." I just fell in love with it. They had more
black people in Chicago in one block then there were in the
whole city of Minneapolis. They had five thousand-- Of
course, they were living in kitchenettes, two, three living
on top of each other along with the cockroaches .
18
MASON: And the rats. Outrageous rents, as well.
WADDY: Well, the kitchenettes weren't so bad, except there
were too many. Five thousand in one block. There were
hardly five thousand in the whole state of Minnesota, and
that was just one block of Chicago. I loved it! I
absolutely loved it.
But when the war came-- And I stayed there, too. I
got pregnant. I got married. I got a divorce. When World
War II came, I decided that I was going to keep my daughter
and work in the daytime when she was going to school. I
applied for a job as a blueprint reader and solderer for
radios at Lockheed [Aircraft Corporation] .
MASON: That doesn't sound like a job that many women
would--
WADDY: I took it. I went to DuSable High School at night
so that I could learn it. What I didn't realize until
later, there was a young man who was teaching the class
that was probably an engineer and couldn't get a job
either, which was why he was teaching there.
Well, anyway, I made an application, and I never will
forget it. A young man interviewed me, and I told him that
I knew how to solder and read radio blueprints. He said,
"Let me see you solder." So he handed me a soldering
iron. I showed him spot soldering. That's a different
kind. So I showed him. Well, he had some bosses, so he
19
went to his bosses and said that I knew how. But they told
him no, that he couldn't hire me because I was an African-
American, I was black. He said-- I heard him, because he
was so provoked or, you know, excited about telling me yes,
thinking that he was hiring somebody. And his boss was
telling him no, he couldn't hire me. The young man said,
"But she already knows how! And we're hiring them by the
hundreds who can't tell a soldering iron from a pressing
iron!" But they insisted. They said no, and that's how I
came to Los Angeles.
20
TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JULY 26, 1991
MASON: That was during the height of the Depression that
you were in Chicago. How did that affect the way you were
living? Did you always seem to manage to find a job?
WADDY: Oh, yes, because I was always a good cook. I am an
excellent cook. Yet I haven't cooked anything for quite a
long time.
MASON: What kind of things did you like to cook?
WADDY: Everything. I cooked anything well. I like to
eat, for one thing.
MASON: Oh, good. [laughter]
WADDY: And so I know good food. I mean, I know many kinds
of food. I know how to read recipes. For instance, a lady
went to a dinner party and the hostess served a cranberry
ring that had oranges and orange rind and walnuts in it.
She got the recipe from the hostess, a raw cranberry
ring. She was entertaining. It was Irving Stone. They
were the Irving Stones, that family. She [Jean Stone] was
entertaining another author and wanted to impress him, so
she asked me what did I think would be an impressive
dinner. I said goose, for one thing. Goose is a fowl, you
know, for the meat. And she said, "And we'll use a
cranberry ring." The cranberry ring didn't have any-- She
just gave me that with no gelatin in it. She watched me
21
make it up, and she watched me put the gelatin in it.
She said, "That's not in the recipe."
I said, "You said it was a ring, did you not?"
She said, "Yes."
I said, "Well, what's holding the things together?
Something has to hold it together."
So it turned out right, of course. She got a lot of
praise for that ring. It's served with sourcream--
mayonnaise mixed with sourcream sauce.
MASON: Oh, so it's more like a salad and not really --
WADDY: Yeah, and it's very, very good if it's made
properly.
^4AS0N: Sounds wonderful.
WADDY: It's grated orange peel, a certain amount of fresh
orange juice, you know, peel, grated in with the
cranberries and chopped walnuts. It's very good. It's
kind of expensive too. Well, she said to me afterwards,
"That's exactly-- It turned out just exactly right." She
said, "How did you know that?" I mean, that's because I'm
a cook. She said, "I wonder why she didn't put that in the
recipe?" I said, "She probably forgot."
MASON: It was so obvious.
WADDY: "She was being the hostess, you know." She looked
at me like she didn't forget it, she just left it out on
purpose. I said, "She probably forgot. You were pressing
22
her hard." But anyway, that's what I mean when I say I was
a good cook. I can read a recipe and tell you how it's
going to look and how it's going to taste before I cook it.
MASON: What memories do you have of Chicago? Because it
was an exciting city, as you were saying, in the 1930s.
WADDY: It wasn't exciting. It wasn't exciting to me.
Minneapolis was more exciting. We didn't do anything. The
thing that impressed me was that there were so many blacks
there and they got together on political things.
MASON: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you about,
because Richard Wright was there in the thirties and
Charles White.
WADDY: Yes, I saw him.
MASON: Oh, did you? Where did you meet him?
WADDY: Charles White?
MASON: No, Richard Wright. You met him?
WADDY: Yeah, Richard Wright.
MASON: You met him?
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: How did you?
WADDY: On a WPA [Works Progress Administration] project.
MASON: Oh, the [Federal] Writers Project.
WADDY: Yes. He was telling me about the first book that
he did--what the plot was. It didn't have a plot. He was
talking about the young man and what he thought. I was
23
trying to learn how to write, but I thought you had to have
a plot. And we argued about that. But he was quite
correct; you don't have to have a plot. He was just
telling me about-- I've forgotten the name of the book.
MASON: Well, that was Native Son.
WADDY: Native Son, that's it. That's it. He was saying
what that young man thought and how he thought and yet was
unable to do it. He was living in a country, in a
situation, where he was unable to do and be what he really
was. That's what he was trying to explain to me. But I
never-- Having come from Minneapolis, why, you could do
anything you want to in Minneapolis, because there weren't
very many blacks there. You know, they didn't have any--
Racial prejudice wasn't practiced there at that time. But
now it's quite different, because I remember reading once
after I got to Los Angeles that there was a race riot in
Minneapolis. That meant that there were a lot of blacks up
there .
MASON: Yeah, they had come north to find jobs.
WADDY: But when I was there, there weren't many blacks
there, so you could go and do anything that you wanted to
do.
MASON: Yeah, I guess it was too far away. Everybody went
to New York or Chicago or Philadelphia. So was this-- Now,
I know Richard Wright formed a writers group, Southside
24
Writers Group. So you just met him sort of on a personal,
sort of on a social --
WADDY: No, it was because we were working for the same WPA
project.
MASON: Oh, what did you do on the WPA project?
WADDY: We were supposed to write something, but I don't
remember my doing anything in particular except talking,
meeting people. I don't remember doing anything.
MASON: I know a lot of things that he wrote for the Writers
Project were things about living in Chicago, in the city.
WADDY: Yes.
MASON: Let's see, did you meet Margaret [Taylor Goss]
Burroughs then? Did you know anybody in the Southside
Community Arts Center?
WADDY: Oh, yes, yes.
MASON: Oh, did you?
WADDY: Yeah. I thought I had some stuff in here about
Margaret Burroughs.
MASON: Well, she's mentioned when you go to the Soviet
Union, but not before that, no.
WADDY: Not before that. Yes, I did.
MASON: Well, that's what I mean about exciting. You're
telling me all these things and you're saying it wasn't
exciting, but it sounds it.
WADDY: Yes, I met Margaret Burroughs, and it is exciting
25
in -that sense, because Minneapolis didn't have that.
MASON: Did you--? I'm sorry, go ahead.
WADDY: Now I forgot what I was going to say. What were
you going to ask me?
MASON: I'm sorry. Well, I was just going to ask if you
met Charles White?
WADDY: No, Charles White was in Los Angeles.
MASON: Well, he came out in the fifties, but he was there
in the thirties. He was in Chicago.
WADDY: Oh, I don't remember meeting him there. I knew him
when I was in--
MASON: Los Angeles. So were you involved in the political
activities in Chicago? Were you interested in them?
WADDY: Yes. You know, I would listen, but I wasn't a
worker, as many of the blacks were. They worked. That's
why they could accomplish something--because they worked at
it. You know, they would have meetings. I did that. I'd
go to the meetings. I met Carter G. Woodson, because I
went to a meeting and talked to him. You know, I went
early and talked to him.
MASON: This was the John Reed Club?
WADDY: I had just gone to a meeting for Carter G.
Woodson. He was the main speaker.
MASON: Oh, I see.
WADDY: No club or anything. I don't remember who
26
sponsored the event .
MASON: How did you get chosen to be on the Writers
Project? Did you have to submit--?
WADDY: Oh, yes, we had to — Maybe that's how I did It. I
don ' t remember .
MASON: So you must have been writing things.
WADDY: Maybe Margaret Burroughs told me about It. She may
have been the one who told me about It. Somebody-- It must
have been through one of those meetings or that group she
had there, the Southslde club, that Southslde art club that
she had. And the museum that she had was In her house.
MASON: Right, In the beginning.
WADDY: Yes. That's right. It was In her house.
MASON: She had a collection that Included African art.
WADDY: But I didn't know about art. I didn't become
particularly Interested In art right then. The thing that
Interested me was the different things that blacks did,
they actually did, and the fact that they were black and
doing. In Minneapolis, you could join the same groups. I
could join art groups there, but they mostly were white
nearly always, very few blacks. Most of the time I'd be
the only one. But this time I wasn't.
MASON: Did that make you feel uncomfortable then when you
were the only one?
WADDY: No, because I didn't know anything else. I had
27
never known anything else. See, when I was born in-- I
didn't go to school in Lincoln, Nebraska. I started school
in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was the only black in the
class. It was ordinary to me. I didn't know anything
else. That's why I liked Chicago. I didn't know that
there were so many people like me doing the same thing.
There was a different feeling, but it was a plus feeling
that I would have missed had I stayed in Minneapolis. I
probably was missing something, but I didn't know what it
was in Minneapolis. One was accepted in Minneapolis
because I wasn ' t any threat . I was not any threat to
anything or anybody.
I remember once that Mama went up to school to talk to
my teacher because she said I read so well that I was going
around to read to classes. My mother objected to that. I
was a very good reader because, as I said, I had an active
imagination, and I would take the part of the characters,
you know, that were in the story and read it that way.
Mama said that-- I remember her saying that she didn't send
me to school to go and read to classes, she sent me to
school to learn how to learn myself, for me to learn. So I
didn't do that anymore. I read to my sisters and would
tell them stories.
MASON: So in Chicago, in other words, there were a lot of
creative groups that you could get involved in.
28
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: And you were mostly interested in writing and not
really in art.
WADDY: Yes. Not in art. I don't remember trying
anything.
MASON: Do you remember ever getting anything--? Did you
ever get anything published that you wrote?
WADDY: Not that I know of.
MASON: Were there other writers that you met? There was
Arna [W.] Bontemps there, and, let's see--
WADDY: They were probably there, but I don't remember
meeting them. I don't remember any contact with them.
MASON: And what about music? Because I understand there
were a lot of jazz musicians that came up from New
Orleans. Was that a big part of your life there?
WADDY : No .
MASON: Okay. So you were working?
WADDY: Yes, I was working. On my days off, that's when I
would go over to Margaret Burroughs ' s house.
MASON: You say you did know Elizabeth Catlett, because
they were sort of friends.
WADDY: I met Elizabeth through Samella Lewis.
MASON: So you were saying that you decided to come to Los
Angeles.
WADDY: Yes, because I couldn't get a job in Chicago, a
29
daytime job. I could get a domestic job, but I didn't want
[to be] a domestic. I wanted a job where I would be away
from home while Marianna [Maryom Ana Al-Wadi] was in school
and [then be] home with her. My sister Margaret is a
registered nurse, and she was working here in Los
Angeles. Her husband [James Haynes]-- She got married in
Minneapolis and moved to Los Angeles. He lived in Saint
Paul. There were more blacks in Saint Paul than in
Minneapolis. Minneapolis and Saint Paul are called the
Twin Cities. It's just across the Mississippi [River].
You took a street car across the Mississippi, I mean across
the bridge. It's just, you know, right together. And she
met-- I can see him, but I can't remember his name. He was
her first husband. My sister got married twice.
MASON: Well, we can add it.
WADDY: [Sinclair] Harrison? No, not Harrison, that's the
second husband. Well, anyway, she got married to him. She
married him. She married in Minneapolis, or did she get
married in Saint Paul? She didn't have any children. But,
anyway, he was working for Douglas [Aircraft
Corporation] . He was working in aircraft, I think. I
don't remember. Here's my daughter.
MASON: Let's pause for a second. [tape recorder off]
Okay, I turned it back on. His name is Jim-- James.
WADDY: She wrote to me that I could get a job if I came
30
here. So I packed up and took my baby- -of course, she
wasn't a baby then--and came to Los Angeles and got a job
the next day. At Douglas.
MASON: Doing what?
WADDY: Riveter. "Rosie the Riveter."
MASON: Yeah, classic. Classic. Where did you live when
you first came here?
WADDY: I lived with my sister when I first came here.
Then I lived in the project over on Rose Hill. That's not
the name of the street, but that was the name of the
project.
MASON: I don't know where that is. What area is that? Is
that around Watts or--?
WADDY 'S DAUGHTER: It's El Sereno. Near El Sereno. We
lived on Florizel Street.
WADDY: Florizel Street, that's it.
WADDY 'S DAUGHTER: In the Rose Hill prewar housing project,
1942.
MASON: So what did you think of Los Angeles? Did it live
up to your expectations? What were your first impressions?
WADDY: I was at the-- I came around Christmastime, and my
daughter wanted some roller skates for Christmas, so she
got them. I mean, that was one of her Christmas presents--
That was one of her Christmas presents. And she
roller skated on Christmas day. I couldn't get over it.
31
because it snows- -
MASON: [laughter] Yeah, in the Windy City it would have
been unbearable.
WADDY: Yes. Whoever heard of, you know, sunshiny and a
sidewalk? I said, "No wonder the houses in Los Angeles
don't have any foundations. They don't need any!"
MASON: Yeah, but then you found out about the earthquakes
probably soon after that.
WADDY: Earthquakes didn't bother me. But I just couldn't--
I liked Los Angeles. My sister was surprised when we got a
place to live right away, because, as I say, I like, you
know-- That was one of my objections to philosophers. They
didn't resolve anything. They didn't go ahead and finish
it. They just talked and talked and talked. I mean, wrote
and wrote and wrote. They didn't have any evidence. You
know, I like evidence and proof.
But anyway, we weren't here very long until we moved
into a place on Rose Hill, on Florizel Street.
When I was riveting, I liked to work with men better
than women. It's because men have a sense of tools, and
their timing is different. You can tell by a certain sound
whether or not a thing is going down right. But women
didn't have that sense at that time. It may have changed
now since they drive so much.
MASON: Yeah, because the men were out working on the
32
cars. And the women- -
WADDY: Yes, yes. I was a great do-it-yourselfer, you
know. Because I never had very much money. I had what my
mother called "champagne taste with a beer income." So I
learned to do many, many things myself, and I would make
things myself.
^4AS0N: You mean sew things and--
WADDY: No, I mean like put that table together and--
MASON: I see.
WADDY 'S DAUGHTER: The one you're sitting in front of. She
made that table.
MASON: Oh, this one.
WADDY: Yeah, and this one too. I sent for it and then
finished that one.
MASON: You assembled it.
WADDY: And well, anything like that. If I wanted some
leather handbag, tooled handbag, of course I couldn't buy
it, so I learned how to work with leather. I made a pair
of sandals for my daughter that she liked so much. I
couldn't make another, second pair because she didn't need
them, you know, as badly as she did that first pair. At
least, I thought so. I used to make all of her clothes. I
sewed, too. In fact, one of her teachers at a parent-
teachers meeting told me that I made her clothes. That was
the very thing I was trying not to show- -that they were
33
homemade. I said, "Yes, I did. How do you know?" She
said, "You couldn't afford to buy them. Not clothes like
that, you couldn't afford it." Anyway, my question was
answered, which is, "Did they look store-bought?" And the
answer was yes. That's all I wanted to know. I didn't
really think about, "How do you know I couldn't afford
it?" I didn't think about that. [laughter]
MASON: A backhanded compliment.
WADDY: But the thing I wanted to see about — James Haynes,
that was his name. What he said about Los Angeles, which I
think is true — And the same thing is true of California.
It's not just Los Angeles. He said — You see, during the war
a lot of blacks came to Los Angeles. Someone said something
about California being south. And whoever he was talking to
said, "Well, California's not south." He said, "No? I never
saw any palm trees in Saint Paul!" [laughter] I like that,
answers like that. My father used to give answers like that,
too. I used to like Hershey almond [chocolate] bars when I
was a child. He would buy them and put them up on the
shelf. I asked for one, and he thought that I'd had
enough. Then I would say to him, "But they'll get stale up
there." He said, "What's the difference between it getting
stale up there or in the store?"
MASON: But you weren't getting any.
WADDY: There wasn't any difference.
34
TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JULY 27, 1991
MASON: Yesterday we left off with you finding employment
with the Douglas [Aircraft] Corporation on their assembly
line doing riveting. You were just telling a story about
how you were actually training people and were one of the
few to be chosen to go to Pasadena.
WADDY: No, Burbank.
MASON: I'm sorry, Burbank.
WADDY: Pasadena didn't have any big industries during the
war. Pasadena was considered then sort of a fine
residential area only for people. They didn't rent their
homes, they owned them. They were homeowners. Anyway, I
told him no. But a friend of mine who worked there went
there. The pay was more, and she liked it.
MASON: So it would have been doing the same thing- -
riveting?
HADDY: Yes, riveting. In riveting, the rivets had to be
absolutely flat to match against the skin of the wing or
part of the wing because of the wind. Men were easier to
work with than women because, I think, they had handled
tools and they listened. There were certain sounds that
certain tools make, and they were aware of them. A
riveting gun and a bucking [bar]-- I've forgotten what the
square was we used. It was a long wire that you put
35
against the long piece of steel, and it had a flexible
steel oblong between two and three inches long and one inch
wide. And it had to be pushed against the rivet a certain
way so that the rivet would be flat, you know, flatten
out. The men could tell from the sound whether or not they
had it in the right position. The women didn't pay any
attention, and so, of course, we had to dig the rivet out,
which made a big hole and it made it worse. That's why I
preferred to work with men.
But I never will forget two incidents. Once a white
guy, very, very tall and slender from Georgia, which made
me think at that time of — I don't remember if it was a
saying or a song--"as tall as a Georgia pine." Well, when
he found that I was his partner, he looked at me and kind
of curled his lip a little bit. I did the same thing. The
manager or instructor, the head boss, explained to him what
was the operation, so he said okay, you know, because he
wanted a job. So he went along bucking properly. Both of
us, when we started, looked at each other with —
MASON: Suspicion or disdain?
WADDY: Distaste. Distaste is how we looked at each
other. But at the end we smiled, because he knew how to
buck the rivet, and, of course, I knew how to use the
gun. I knew how to use a bucking bar. We just changed
sides. We'd work one side — I would be using the gun, and
36
to do the other side I'd be using the bucking bar and he
the gun. We smiled at each other.
Another time, I think this man was an islander, but I
don't know what island. But he was half my size. He
wasn't as tall as I, and he was very much smaller. And
again, both of us looked at each other with distaste, great
distaste. At the end, we both smiled, because he knew how
to use the tool, and I did, too. We had a good
part[nership] . You know, we didn't have to correct it, dig
the rivet out or anything like that. It was perfect.
MASON: Work is work.
WADDY: Yes, work is work. It makes no difference. If you
know what, period. I've never forgotten that. And I
haven't forgotten what that young man said about the
soldering iron, "She already knows how, when we're hiring
them by the hundreds who don't know the difference between
a soldering iron and a pressing iron." He was a white guy,
too. He wasn't--
MASON: So when the end of the war came and all the
soldiers came back, then a lot of people, a lot of women
usually, lost their jobs in the factories.
WADDY: Women and men. Because he just picked out the best
ones. When he said to me that I could work in Burbank, he
said, "You're late all the time," he said, "but you do
very, very good work." I was late because I overslept. It
37
was a graveyard— I worked on graveyard shift, which was
from twelve at night until seven in the morning. And as we
were speaking about the red cars earlier, when I'd come
home to Florizel Street, I'd go to sleep on the red car and
the conductor would come and say "This is Florizel
Street." He'd wake me up if I went to sleep on the car
because I had another job. I was, you know-- It wasn't
enough money for what I wanted to do with my daughter in
school. I was trying to save a little money and give her
as many advantages --
I was trying to save money to buy a car, a secondhand
car. I have never owned a new car in my life. I have
driven for many years, but they were all used cars. I
remember that I drove to San Francisco in a Model T coupe,
a Ford Model T. I hadn't been driving very long then, but
I figured if I could drive to San Francisco in that car
then I would really know how to drive. And I did.
MASON: It wasn't one of those where you have to crank it
up or anything like that, was it?
WADDY: No. It wasn't-- I didn't have to crank it, but it
wasn't an automatic shift. What's that other shift called?
MASON: Standard.
WADDY: Yeah, standard shift. It was a standard shift. It
was many years before I graduated to automatic shift. I
meant to buy a car, so I had another job. That's why I was
38
so tired. But I was able to do both of them.
^4AS0N: What was your other job?
WADDY: I was a domestic, as a day worker. Not one family
but several families.
MASON: So instead of taking the job in Burbank, what did
you do instead? I understand at some point you opened up
your own business.
WADDY: Yes. Actually, I tried to become self-employed
several times, but I never had the right attitude. For
instance, when I first learned ceramics I was smoking. As
I say, I started smoking when I first started working at
Douglas. And doing cleaning, you know, that kind of work
didn't bother me. I wasn't-- It didn't bother me to do
that kind of work. One day, I don't really remember how, I
heard of a ceramics class, and I went to it. Tony Hill was
the instructor. I never will forget that as I was learning
I didn't pick up a cigarette. I remarked to the other
students, the other ladies around me- -they were mostly
ladies--I said, "I haven't smoked one cigarette all this
time!" "Well, that's wonderful!"
MASON: Because ceramics was so relaxing.
WADDY: And I was so interested in it, and I liked it so
much. Tony Hill had a brother [Evans Hill] , and he cleaned
offices at night. I met him and somehow or other we hooked
up. We worked together, and I thought of how one cart
39
could carry all of our cleaning things. I told him about
it. Tony's brother was a carpenter, a very good one. So
he made the cart for me from the idea. I worked with him,
too. I was working with him. Some company in Los Angeles
had several offices, you know. I don't remember the name
of the company, but it may have been Atlas at that time.
They had several offices. Well, anyway, I talked to the
president about this cart, and he said that if I brought
him a model, he would see about using it. I told Tony's
brother-- I can't remember his name. Well, anyway, he
wouldn't make me a cart because I wouldn't marry him.
MASON: Oh! So you had known him before you met Tony Hill.
WADDY: No. I met him after I knew Tony.
^4AS0N: Is that why you took the ceramics course?
WADDY: No, I read about it in one of the African- American
papers or heard about it someway like that, that they were
offering classes, that Tony was offering classes. Where
was this place?
MASON: Was it an art school or just a high school or some
community art center?
WADDY: It seemed like it was his own place, Tony Hill's
own place, because he had his own kiln.
MASON: And what kind? Was it hand-building or wheel?
WADDY: It was both. We started hand-building, and then we
went to the wheel. But I didn't-- I don't remember that I
40
was very good at the wheel. I don't remember my being
that. I remember doing pretty good things by hand, but not
the wheel .
MASON: Do you have any of those things now?
WADDY: It was a long time ago. It was during the war,
around that time. It was during the war, because I had
started smoking.
MASON: So that was really the first time you had practiced
art.
WADDY: Yeah, it was the first time I knew about it. It
was the first time I had ever done it and the first time
that I knew how to go to classes where they were offered.
I knew I had to do something after the war was over. But I
had decided that I was going to try and get something that
I liked to do. It was part of my search. I don't remember
all the particulars.
MASON: Did you meet other artists through Tony Hill?
WADDY: No, but I learned an appreciation for ceramics,
though. It enlightened —
MASON: What did he teach you about ceramics?
WADDY: He taught about glazes, and I learned about that
southerner who was the inventor that made glazes out of
some kind of seed, I think. Who was it? [George
Washington Carver]
MASON: I don't know.
41
WADDY: It was too long ago for me to remember now.
^4AS0N: Yeah, so this was an experimental --a new glaze?
WADDY: No, he's famous for glazes. He's an African-
American, a southerner. And he's from-- He did other
things, but he's certainly known for making glazes. And
colored pencils, known for it. If I call his name, you'd
recognize it. He's well-known as one of America's black
inventors. [tape recorder off]
MASON: Well, when did you meet Danny [Daniel LaRue]
Johnson? And when did you start to meet — ?
WADDY: I met him through my sister, Gladys [Gilliam
Little], my youngest sister. She met him someplace after
he had just won a Guggenheim [Foundation] award. So when I
talked to her about getting the blacks in L.A. together-- I
said, you know, "If we could get them to a social affair
someplace that they would attend, then I could maybe form a
small group." That was after I had been fired from the
county job. Because after I left Douglas, I think the next
job I had was working for Los Angeles County Hospital as an
admissions worker. An admissions worker was really--
MASON: They would probably screen people as they come in.
WADDY: Yes, to see whether or not they are eligible for
county care. Yes, that's what they did. There was an
amusing incident when I got that job. I didn't know
anything about medicine. In fact, I didn't think very much
42
of it. And I didn't know anything about doctors. So I
said, "Well, since I have this kind of a job, I'd better
find out something." The best way to find out things,
sometimes, is when people are sitting down to a meal. You
introduce the subject, and everybody joins in and says what
he has to say about it. We had a cafeteria in the dining
room, and I pulled two or three tables together. Each
table seated four people, one on each side. So I pulled
them together, and when the workers came in we'd sit
together. And sometimes the interns would sit down. Once
in a while a resident would sit down, a nurse would sit
down. Then I would introduce the subject, something about
medicine, and they'd tell us, add what they--
Well, one time when I had the tables together, an
intern was arguing with a resident that it only took six
years to go through school in medicine. He said, "Really,
that's all it takes. Not eight." At that time it took
eight, as I remember it. And finally the resident admitted
that it took six years, you know, the lesser time. The
other time was spent in learning a certain routine or
procedure to be sure that they acted a certain way. They
had to be trained that way. I was always doing something
on every job that I had that was not protocol.
MASON: What else did you do there that — ?
WADDY: Well, the supervisor, the manager of the cafeteria.
43
complained about the tables being together, the people
sitting down. But of course the thing was that the
conversation was always very interesting and spirited. And
I learned quite a bit.
MASON: But they objected because that's not the way--
WADDY: Yes, it wasn't proper. My supervisor called a
meeting to have it stopped. She called all the social
workers together when she just needed me--just to tell me--
because I was the one who was doing it, nobody else but
me. The other people sat down, because they liked the
conversation. So I thought that was very silly. You know,
why not go directly to the person who's responsible? Well,
anyway- -
MASON: Did you stop doing it? Or did you tell her she
didn't know what she was talking about?
WADDY: No, I just told her that all the rest of the
workers there that she was talking to-- Why call all the
rest of the workers together when they hadn't done
anything? But they didn't think anything of it because
they were already trained. They were already
indoctrinated, so they didn't think anything of it. Just
wait for the next thing I was going to do. [laughter]
MASON: Did you make a lot of friends there at the
hospital?
WADDY: Oh, yeah, many.
44
MASON: How long did you work there?
WADDY: That's when I got my first used car. I don't
remember how long it was. I think I quit. I wasn't fired,
though. Then I started trying to do things, becoming self-
employed. I tried making a chili dog [stand], but it
didn't make enough money for me to live on.
MASON: So you had a little stand?
WADDY: Yes, I had a hot dog stand. I used a chili sauce,
and they were called chili dogs.
MASON: I was reading that it was while you were working in
the hospital that you were diagnosed with epilepsy.
WADDY: No. My self -employment didn't give me a steady
income, so I decided to get another job. By this time, you
know, I'm getting older and older and older. So I applied
to work for Los Angeles County as a temporary clerk, and I
took a test for that. With temporary clerks, it was a very
easy test for me. I scored one hundred. They didn't have
one to ten. The highest score was one hundred, the next
ninety, next down eighty, next seventy, down. That's the
way they scored. A hundred was the highest score. So I
got a hundred on the test. But I forgot that the county
has three screens. You have to pass three screenings. You
had to pass three things in order to get in. You had to
pass a written test, a verbal test when you're interviewed,
and then a physical test.
45
Well, when I got a hundred on the-- They changed-- A
hundred on the written test. The county decided they
wanted permanent clerks, and they took them out of their
temporary clerk pool. That meant the highest ones, you
know, had to have a verbal test. So I decided that I would
fail on the verbal test because I didn't want a permanent
job, I just wanted a temporary job. I wanted just enough
time for me to try and find a job that was self-employed.
So the first supervisor, I gave her some wrong
answers— the first interviewer. [With] the second
interviewer, I tried the same thing, but she said, "I'm
going to take you anyway." And I was hired. Because the
answer I gave her didn't add up with the written test.
And then I had a physical. When she said she'd hire
me anyway, then I started to work, and then I had a
physical. Well, there wasn't anything I could do about the
physical, when the results from the physical came, the
doctor said, "Let her go because she's the kind that drops
down anyplace, anytime." He didn't say it was epilepsy,
because I don't think it can be diagnosed.
MASON: He didn't recommend any treatment or anything?
WADDY: No, he just said, "Let her go." He said, "She
can't work at all." So I said to the supervisor, "Well,
how am I going to live if I can't work?" She said, "Well,
I guess you'll have to receive state aid." Because I was
46
in my fifties, fifty, fifty-one, or fifty-two, or something
like that. But I wasn't old enough to get Social Security
yet. She said, "I guess you'll have to have state aid,"
So since I was fired, I got state aid. I didn't have to
make any application because it was from county to county,
you know, from one government agent to another government
agent. So it was no problem at all. They just sent me the
check. But I was very, very angry.
MASON: Why?
WADDY: Because I wanted to work. I was in the habit of
working .
MASON: You had never experienced any kind of physical
symptoms before?
WADDY: No-- Oh, yes, I had some symptoms, but I didn't
have any accidents, as I did later on. As I grew older, I
actually had attacks. Very much so. I remember I had one
here in San Francisco, twice. I used to come up to San
Francisco more often than I did later on. I was in the
hospital. I dropped down just as the doctor said. I think
I was on the street or something, and I had to go to the
hospital. But I didn't stay very long. They gave me
Dilantin. That was the first time that I had ever taken
Dilantin. And whenever I didn't take it, then I would have
an attack eventually, you know, after a while. So that's
when my daughter [Maryom Ana Al-Wadi], I remember my
47
daughter said to me, "Well, Mother, you should have been
dead long ago. You just won't lay down." [laughter] She
said, "You Just won't lay down."
MASON: So you had more time to spend with your daughter,
if you weren't working.
WADDY: Oh, she was grown. She was grown up. She was
living here in San Francisco.
MASON: No, I mean when you started to receive the checks
from the--
WADDY: No, I didn't-- I was angry because I didn't--
That ' s when I started thinking about getting the blacks
together, the blacks in L.A. together, because I didn't
have anything to do, you know, except the regular housework
and going to the store and fixing the meals. But I was
very strong then, and I had a lot of energy.
MASON: And the civil rights movement.
WADDY: And that's why Gladys introduced me to Danny
Johnson. Because unless I was actually in the bed from
something, I wasn't sick other than that. One day I said
to myself, "You've always said that if you had plenty of
money--" No, not plenty of money, "if you had a place to
stay and enough to eat, why you would do this, that, and
the other, " you know, different plans that I had for
starting social groups. I'm more interested in the
condition of man than I am in anything else- -to improve his
48
condition. But I think that he has to do it himself. It
has to come from him. Somebody else can introduce the
idea, and they can even, having made the introduction, the
person to whom it was introduced might improve on it, but
it has to start with the person. It has to start with the
man himself. All I wanted to do was get it started. That
would take time and energy, and I had promised myself-- I
had said to myself once, "If I had the time, a place to
stay, and something to eat, why, that's what I would do."
MASON: What did you think needed improving most? Was it
economic or social or political?
WADDY: I thought that first we ought to get together and
talk about common problems, something that was common to
everybody and how to resolve it and work on it. But the
main thing was to get them together first. That was the
hardest thing, the first thing to be done. They had to be
brought together. I was thinking about African- Americans.
MASON: Yeah. By this time, the civil rights movement was
gaining momentum. Wasn't that bringing people together in
Los Angeles somewhat?
WADDY : No .
MASON: Not really?
WADDY: Not like in Chicago. They talk about it loosely,
but the people who needed to work with it were not really
involved in civil rights. The people who were involved in
49
civil rights weren't what one would call a solid citizen.
A solid citizen was a person at that time who has a
permanent home and a job or a business and a family. The
people who were interested in civil rights then didn't
qualify, didn't meet those qualifications.
MASON: They were younger people?
WADDY: Some of them were young. Most of them were younger
people. Some of the them were older, but the majority of
them I think were younger. I thought all people should be
involved, but I wasn't thinking about civil rights in
particular. I was thinking that they had to be involved in
working among themselves and fostering certain ideas among
themselves, certain trends among themselves, so that they
could forward whatever cause that was outside of themselves
to their advantage.
MASON: Did you find inspiration in, say, Martin Luther
King [Jr.]?
WADDY: No, I was-- No.
MASON: It was just something that you had been thinking
about on your own from what you had observed?
WADDY: Yeah, for many years. Many, many years. Ever
since I was, you know, like in my twenties.
MASON: Well, you were saying that Chicago —
WADDY: Yeah.
MASON: So that's the kind of thing you were talking about
50
when you were with Margaret [Taylor Goss] Burroughs.
WADDY: No, I was listening mostly to what different people
said, because I didn't feel that I had all the answers. I
felt that the answers would come from everybody. Everybody
would put what he had to say in it and then an answer could
be made or had. But every person had [to make] a
contribution for it to be a common thing.
MASON: So Daniel --
WADDY: My sister met Danny, Daniel LaRue Johnson.
MASON: Did he have a lot of information?
WADDY: Not at all. She was impressed by his having won
this--
MASON: Oh, Guggenheim.
WADDY: Guggenheim. And she said he was interesting in
himself, you know, the man himself was interesting, and for
me to meet him. But when I decided to try and make a group
of African-Americans in Los Angeles, I said I'd do it
through art, because I felt that if they knew that my
intent was social or civic that they wouldn't come. But if
they were attending an art affair, that they were so
socially important, that they would do it. So I asked
Danny if he knew-- I told him that I'd like to have names
of some artists. I'd like to have a juried art show at the
Los Angeles County Museum [of Art] of black artists. There
had never been any. He said that there weren't that many
51
black artists at museum quality.
I said, "Well, who do you think is the — ?" I asked him
if he thought he was.
He said, "Well, of course."
I said, "Well, who do you think is as good as you
are?"
He said, well, Mel Edwards was as good as he was.
So I said, "Okay, what's his telephone number?"
He gave it to me. I called Mel and told him the same
thing, that I wanted a juried art show at the L.A. County
Museum. Who did he think was as good as he was? He gave
me the name of George Clack. Clack, his name is. So it
went until I had quite a few names, you know, like thirty
or so.
At that time, there was a black bank called Safety
Savings and Loan Company in L.A. They had a community room
in the back of the bank which they rented out to various
organizations. Marjorie Green was in charge of it. I told
her I'd like to use it for a meeting of these artists. She
said okay. So we didn't have to pay any fee, and we met
there. I told them about it, and they liked the idea so
much that they decided-- They liked the idea, but then I
didn't know anything about art. I knew I liked it all
right, and I knew that it had an important social value,
but I wasn't an artist. I just liked the work.
52
^4AS0N: How would you define the social value of art? I
mean, what do you mean?
WADDY: Well, art to me has a social value the same as,
say, religion has a social value, in the same sense, as a
spiritual thing. And it does the same thing — some of the
things, anyway (I'm not very religious ) --that religion is
supposed to do. It inspires one. It lends you courage.
It makes a pleasant atmosphere, so that you have pleasant
thoughts. And it makes you think. A lot of people don't
think. They react all right, and they have a thinking
apparatus, but they don't use it very much. That's what I
meant by a social value.
The first one is obvious- -that it makes a pleasant
surroundings. Everybody enjoys that. When one enjoys
anything, that means that one is happy and is apt to bring
out the best in themselves when they're happy. That's
good. That makes a good world. That's what I mean by art
being spiritual or being of social value. It's also gives
you-- It's another way of expressing yourself, because many
people are artists and not aware of it. I'm one of them,
[laughter] The artists thought I was an artist, because
they couldn't conceive of a person, just a lay person,
being that interested. Of course, I didn't tell them that
my ultimate aim was civic and social. I didn't mention
that to them.
53
TAPE hfUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
JULY 27, 1991
MASON: So you would say that to you successful art or
important art is art that has those three or four virtues,
that it inspires people and as well as being pleasant to
look at.
WADDY: It doesn't necessarily have to inspire anything,
but if a person-- I don't think that it necessarily, you
know, has to-- It depends on the viewer whether or not that
art gives them inspiration. Different people bring
different things to art. Art, to me, it makes you feel
good. That's what it does. It might make you feel good
because it makes you think. It might make you feel good
because it inspires you. It might make you feel good
because it brings another viewpoint to something that
you've already thought about or know. It does something to
you. As I say, it can be as little as just being pleasant.
MASON: Is there any art that you don't like--that doesn't
appeal to you or that doesn't make you feel good? Or do
you enjoy most of it because whatever it does it still
makes you think maybe about why--? Or are there some kinds
of art--? I don't know, pop art is one that usually people
dislike a lot.
WADDY: That's because they don't understand what the
artist is trying to say, I think. If the artist-- Or they
54
don't know, whatever the subject is, enough about each
subject that's being portrayed. But I think that pop art
is-- People don't understand what the artist is trying to
say or saying. Because some of them go past trying to say,
they say it. Or they may not agree with what the artist is
saying. I like all kinds of art, if I understand it. The
understanding adds to your enjoyment. If you don't
understand it, then you just have to depend on how it
looks. And when you know how it looks and understand it
too, then it's of great value to you.
h4AS0N: And so when you had this show at the Safety Savings
and Loan--
WADDY: No, we didn't have the show. Because they were
good artists and it was going to be a juried show, it would
have to be at the L . A . County . So I ' d have to ask the
curator of the county. He was [Richard] Brown. I think it
was Brown at the time. I can't remember his first name.
^4AS0N: Well, Rick Brown was the director around 19-- I
think he started there in 1965. So you went to the
director or — ?
WADDY: Yeah, director, whoever it is who sets up shows.
I'm not — Well, anyway, I decided that I'd ask Mr. Houston,
Norman [0.] Houston at the Golden State [Mutual Life
Insurance Company] . I told him. And I would invite
Charles White, because he was an artist and I wasn't an
55
artist. So the three of us went there. I'll use the name
Brown, although I'm not certain. He said we could have a
show if we could find him a [Henry 0.] Tanner. And years
later — Oh, dear, who's that man that we were talking about
earlier today who has a collection?
MASON: Cecil Fergerson.
WADDY: Cecil Fergerson. He was working there at the
county, and years later Cecil told me that there was a
Tanner already there down in the basement in the storage.
But he didn't know it, I guess.
MASON: Or maybe he wanted one for his own personal —
WADDY: No, I think he wanted one for the museum. But he
didn't know it was there. The museum did have a Tanner.
Because having a Tanner would be quite a feather in his
cap, you know, because Tanner is a good artist and what we
call in books "a collector's item," you know. It's why
they're having this Tanner show going around the country
now.
MASON: I wonder why he said that. I mean, he knew it was
impossible to get, so he wouldn't have to have the show?
WADDY: If I had known as much about art as I know now, I
could have gotten a Tanner. You know, I could have
borrowed it for a while to get the show done. Because in
the art world they have the same kind of shenanigans going
on as they do in business. You know, it's a business, and
56
you do the same kind of tricks. [laughter] But I didn't
know that then. So we never had the show.
I came back and told the artists the condition of
having the show, and none of them knew where to get a
Tanner. So we didn't have the show. That was the end of
it. But the artists were so happy to be sitting so close
together. There were about fifteen or twenty, we'll say.
Maybe there were more. There weren't any less than that,
but maybe there were more than that. They were so happy to
be together, they said, "No, we'll form a group." Not
"We'll form a group," but "We want to stay together." So
it was all right with me. Then we decided on a name and
made up the rules of membership. That's how Art West
Associated was born, just because they wanted to stay
together. They wanted to be in touch with each other, and
we took in new members .
MASON: You were the president?
WADDY: They made me the president because I had gotten the
artists together, not because of my knowledge or any other
reason, just simply because I had initiated it. That's
all.
MASON: Did they allow you any say in what was going on
after that?
WADDY: Yeah, but not much. Yes, they did. They allowed
me — We elected a secretary and a treasurer and decided
57
what the dues were going to be and Just had a regular
club. That's how it started. We had regular meetings at
each artist's home. That's where they were. And when the
United States started that humanities and history
department, humanities, arts. National —
MASON: Endowment for the Arts.
WADDY: Yes, National Endowment for the Arts. Then I
thought that we should try and get a permanent place for
ourselves. One of the artists there, Helen Green, I think
her name was Helen Green, her father owned his home in
Watts. He had a lot near there, next-door or near his
house. When he heard that we were trying to work on a
permanent place, he said that he would give us the lot,
give Art West the lot, if we would put in a foundation.
But the men in the club didn't like the location.
MASON: What was wrong with it?
WADDY: Well, it was in Watts. That's what was wrong with
it. And they didn't-- Now, had I had my wits about me, I
would have gone out there with some stakes and strong cord
and, you know, squared off enough feet to lay the twenty by
twenty or sixteen by sixteen and started shoveling, digging
a ditch, because I was certainly strong enough to do it.
But I just wasn't thinking. And then the men would have
helped me. They would have helped me dig the ditch. I
always regretted that I didn't do that.
58
MASON: So there wasn't enough status in Watts, or what was
wrong with the Watts conununity? I mean, this was a few
years before the riots. The riots were in '65, and you
started Art West in '62. So did he offer to give you the
plot before the riots?
WADDY : Be fore , uh- huh .
MASON: Things were deteriorating, but it still wasn't-- It
hadn't been burned pretty much to the ground.
WADDY: No, it hadn't been burned, but they were
deteriorating. You know, in the black community. Watts
didn't have that good of a name. That's why they didn't
want it there. I've always regretted not having done that,
because that's all I had to do, because the men would have
come to my aid. Well, that's one of the regrets of Art
West.
MASON: What kinds of — ?
WADDY: But it got to be known throughout the country.
When artists from out of the country came, they came to our
meetings and became members.
MASON: Who were some of the people that you remember who
aren't from the area who came and joined?
WADDY: I'd have to look it up. I don't remember just
offhand.
MASON: So did it change--? When I was asking whether the
artists let you have your say, I was asking whether the
59
meetings fulfilled the social purposes that you'd
envisioned.
WADDY: No. I didn't introduce that.
MASON: So it just becaune a group so that the artists could
meet and talk and probably plan exhibits.
WADDY: We would plan, yes. We planned exhibits. When we
had it in city hall, the first one at L.A. city hall, that
was a juried show. We had several of them. I'm sorry I
don't have the minutes. Several juried shows. The reason
I thought about the National Endowment is because I wrote a
proposal and we got funded $5,000 for that. I wanted the
artists to stay busy, either having a show-- And they
complained about not being able to sell their work.
So, let's see, where is that paper?
MASON: Maybe I'll pause here. [tape recorder off] I'm
looking at an advertisement. You say it's from Essence
magazine, an ad for Art West Associated to buy an original
print. The subscriber ship-- Oh, and you put out
brochures. You published brochures for the-- That's
interesting. So that was well--
WADDY: That was one thing that we did.
MASON: That was funded by the National Endowment. So this
was after-- When did you go around the country to collect
prints by black artists? Was that before?
WADDY: I don't remember [whether] before or after. I
60
don't remember hardly anything about it at all, to tell you
the truth. You see, I have to look it up.
MASON: Because, let's see, the book called Prints by
American Negro Artists, that's--
WADDY: Oh, yes. That's another thing. That was another
one. I wanted to show you something about that book.
[tape recorder off] Up north here, called Art-West
Associated North, that's New Perspectives in Black Art.
MASON: So she [Evengeline J. "Vangie" Montgomery] came to
Los Angeles--
WADDY: She lived, yeah, I knew her in Chicago. I'd known
her a long time.
MASON: Oh. Was she a native of Chicago?
WADDY: No, she was a native of Boston. Negro History
Week. That's why we were in city hall. And Prints by
American Negro Artists, see, I started that because, well,
Martin Luther King [Jr.]'s coming here. At USC [University
of Southern California]-- Let me get the--
MASON: Well, there's a guy [Theodore V.] Roelof-Lanner who
edited the book. [tape recorder off] He heard him. He
and his wife went to hear Martin Luther King. He had done
prints for USC. He'd been doing —
WADDY: A master artist with the master printers, something
like that. He decided after hearing Martin Luther King
that he would put some black artists in there. He went to
61
the printmaker's society, and Betye Saar was the only
member there. She said he asked her if there were any
other black printmakers. And she said, "Oh, yes. You go
over to Ruth Waddy's house. She knows a whole lot of
them." I hardly knew about printing at all, period, at
that time. But Margaret Burroughs had sent me a little
booklet of printmakers from the Southside art group.
MASON: Yes, Southside Community Arts Center. She was also
making prints herself.
WADDY: Yes. She sent me that. I knew that Van Slater was
a printmaker and Bill [William E.] Smith. Let's see, who
else? Betye Saar was making prints, too, at that time.
Because I have one of Betye Saar's prints.
MASON: Yeah, the one reproduced in the book is called
Samsara.
WADDY: Yes, that's it.
MASON: That's the one you have?
WADDY: No, I don't have that one. I have another one. If
you look in there in that book-- [tape recorder off]
MASON: I was looking at one of your copies of Prints by
American Negro Artists. You have a postcard in the front
sent to you by James Parker who says that he found [a copy
of] this book in a bookstore in Chicago and it was [for
sale for] $400.
WADDY: No, in New York, because he was in New York when he
62
wrote that.
MASON: Oh, you mentioned it to him while you were in--
WADDY: At the National Conference of Artists in Atlanta
that Margaret Burroughs founded some years ago, many, many
years ago.
MASON: There were two editions published. The second
edition has an essay in it by James Porter.
WADDY
MASON
WADDY
That's right.
Who got Porter to write the--?
I guess Roelof-Lanner. I guess, because, you see,
I don't think he was very much impressed by [the
introduction that I wrote for] the book at first. I wrote
something for Roelof-Lanner. I wrote an introduction.
It's in there in the second edition someplace. But it
wasn't what he wanted. What he wanted was what James
Porter wrote. But I didn't know anything. I didn't know
that much about art, you see. I just liked it. When I got
involved with the artists, then I learned something about
it. But I had never gone to art school or done anything in
art.
MASON: Well, James Porter probably at that time--
Yeah, he was teaching art at Howard University.
Yes, Howard University. So nobody knew as much
about African-American art probably as he did. On the
other hand, I bet he didn't know much about California
63
WADDY
MASON
artists. I wonder.
WADDY: No, I guess not. I don't know.
MASON: Because, you know. New York was everything then.
And all the prints-- How did you gather together all the
prints that are going to be printed?
WADDY: Well, Roelof-Lanner said that he wanted to put in
some black printmakers. I said yes, and he looked it
over. There were enough so that after a while he said, "I
don't want you to do that book at all for USC. I want to
do a book about just black artists, black printmakers,"
because he was a printer. He said, "Would you help me?" I
said, "Well, of course." So I wrote-- I don't know whether
it was a postcard or a letter — it was probably a letter,
although a short letter--to all of the schools or to the
print artists in different towns, asking them to send some
prints to me for the book. Of course, none of them sent
any. Not a one.
Roelof-Lanner said, "Well, what are we going to do?"
I said, "I guess we'll have to do the same thing we
did with the ones in L.A. — go and get them." That's how I
got them in L.A. [laughter] They didn't come to me, I
went and got them.
He said, "Well, I don't have that kind of money. I
don ' t have any money for the fare . "
I said, "Do you have $100?"
64
He said yes.
Well, at that time Greyhound bus had an advertising
promotion program going on. You could ride for $100 round-
trip anyplace that the bus stopped. Or anyplace that it
stopped, that would take care of all of it. But by the
time I got the money, the promotion was over. So I went on
another bus. I don't remember the name of it. Anyway,
there are two bus companies in L.A., and I went on the
other one. I didn't get the Greyhound. That was $100, and
they went to nearly all of the places.
So I mapped out the places that the bus went. I asked
the artists for the names and addresses of a relative who
lived in that town or a friend who would put me up
overnight and give me one meal. And I told them why I
wanted to do that, you know, that we were trying to publish
a book. I waited until I got an answer, whether they would
say yes or no, because I didn't have any money either. I'm
a state aid recipient. [laughter]
So after I got my answers back, I took my round- trip
ticket. A friend of mine in Glendale, she's a little,
short, fat, white woman. She was a librarian. I think she
was a librarian. Well, anyway, she had bought a cashmere
coat that was too small for her. It was on sale and it was
too small. She gave me that coat because it was in the
winter.
65
MASON: Yeah. Well, that was nice.
WADDY: I had heard how warm cashmere was and
lightweight. And it is exactly, because it did just-- It
did a perfect job for me.
MASON: It helped you in the Chicago wind?
WADDY: Yes, yes. It's very warm. So I waited until I got
an answer. Nearly all of them said yes. Of course, all of
them said yes. And I went on my way.
MASON: Where did you stop first?
WADDY: I don't remember that.
MASON: Did you go all the way out to the Midwest and
stop? Did you stop maybe first in Chicago or did you go
all the way to New York and then stop back?
WADDY: No, I stopped along the way. I probably-- I don't
know . I don ' t remember .
MASON: But you made it all the way--
WADDY: I went north. I went to the Midwest first, because
I think I remember Detroit, and Detroit's not that far away
from Chicago. Yeah, I went up and then down the coast and
around and back. I probably went that way. I remember
incidents of the trip.
MASON: Judging from the artists represented in the book,
it seems like you hit all the forty-eight states. You
didn't go to Alaska and Hawaii, but--
WADDY: No, I didn't.
66
MASON: But you made it all the way to--
WADDY: I made quite a few. I didn't get to all the
states. I didn't get to Washington or Oregon.
MASON: Yeah. No, I was just kidding. But it is a wide
range of artists. So what kinds of--? Did you have an
idea of what kinds of prints you wanted or would you just
get the artist to bring out some things?
WADDY: I didn't go by anything except what I liked. I
remember writing Vangie Montgomery like that. She said,
"Well, Ruth--" When I got to Boston-- Now, Vangie knows
about art. She's an artist, but she works in jewelry. But
she knows about it. She's had training, and she knew that
I hadn ' t had any .
She said, "How do you select the prints?" She said
that to me.
I said, "Well, I look at everything they have. And
what I like best, well, that's what I take."
She said, "What? What! Ruth, that's no way to pick
out prints. "
I said, "Well, I didn't know."
She gave me a booklet. I'll have to find it. She
gave me something to tell me how to pick out prints.
MASON: Yeah, it's really a complicated process.
WADDY: So when I got through reading the booklet, I said,
"Well, it says the same thing I said. You pick out what
67
you want." It did. I'll find it. It's around here
someplace. God knows where, but I still have it.
MASON: Because there are so many printing processes and
papers .
WADDY: Yeah, but that has nothing to do with what you
like. The process has nothing to do with what you like.
The different kinds of process, that's what I wrote for the
book. And they printed it. It's in there, along with
Wood's, I mean James --
MASON: Porter's.
WADDY: Porter's. But this is what I said to her. I said,
"I read it. It says the same thing I do. It says that
after you get through, what you like, you pick that."
MASON: And the artists, did they persuade you either way
or--?
WADDY: They were so pleased to see me. They were pleased
to-- Oh, I've had a tremendous amount of artwork that I've
had to sell when I came up here because I couldn't afford
to bring it up here and there was no place to keep it
because I've got stuff behind-- I don't have a bed board.
That's not a bed board, that's paintings that I can't
hang. And behind the desk and under the bed it's a whole
lot of work there. They'd give me-- just say-- "Would you
like that? Would you like that?" Well, of course I'd like
it. You know, they were beautiful things. Beautiful
68
things, but I just couldn't afford it. I didn't have
anyplace to put it. I put up as much as I could at
first. In that apartment, I had more freedom than I have
here to hang. And it was bigger, too. The neighborhood
was kind of-- Union Street, Union Avenue in L.A., is not as
bad as Watts--the reputation that Watts had. It's not one
of the choicest parts of Los Angeles, but the building
itself was superior to this building. It's much, much
larger and storage space was much bigger. Of course, it
was on a bigger piece of land, too.
Well, anyway, she didn't say anything when I said the
book says the same thing that I do, that you pick out what
you like. So that's how I got around. But when I got to
Detroit, I took the telephone numbers of everybody that I
was going to stay with. [Donald] Stinson. I can't think
of Stinson 's first name.
MASON: Donald?
WADDY: He enamels copper. Have you seen that copper
ashtray that I have on the desk in the bedroom?
MASON : No , I haven ' t seen that .
WADDY: Well, he's as good as that man. He's an L.A. man
that did that.
MASON: Well, Curtis Tann —
WADDY: Yes, Curtis Tann. Yes. Yes, he can-- That's his
piece that I was going to show you. One of his pieces.
69
Well, Stinson is another one who can enamel as well as
Tann. He had given me his sister's name — she was married —
and telephone number. I had written to her. But when I
got there, she hadn't received the letter. I had written
in time, but she just hadn't gotten it. It was a funny
thing .
So when I called her up, I said, "This is Ruth
Waddy . "
And she said, "Yes?" like, "Well, what about it? Who
are you? Yes, so your name's Ruth Waddy."
I said, "Well, I wrote you and asked if I could — "
She said, "Well, I never received any--" It was around
eleven thirty at night. Anyway, she said, "No, I never
received any letter."
I said, "Well, I couldn't have had your telephone
number [unless] your brother Donald — " Donald Stinson his
name is. She didn't answer that.
So she turned to her husband, and she said, "Well,
I'll send my husband down to the bus station. We'll
see." You know, like I'll send my husband down and he'll
look you over and see if you look safe enough.
Well, I told her about the letter I had written and
the date that I had put on, you know, when it was dated.
Do you know, the next morning that letter came. It was
held up in the post office some way, and had the same date.
70
MASON: Well, you must have met his approval in your
cashmere coat, anyway.
WADDY: Yeah. So I stayed there in Detroit. I never will
forget. And that's how Romare Bearden-- I met him too that
way. Not that way, but I met on the tour when I went to
New York. One of the things he said was, "Would you like
me to take you to lunch?" Well, I'm not much on eating out
because- -
MASON: Well, if you were low on cash--
WADDY: Yeah, first of all, I couldn't afford the places
that I would like to eat if I were going to eat out. And
at that time--see, this is a long time ago--I was very
particular about my food. I mean, I was particular about
what I ate. Of course, I'm particular now, but I'm not
quite as rude as I used to be. [laughter]
Because he said, "You want to go to lunch?"
I said, "No, thank you."
He said, "Well, I can afford it."
I said, you know, "I don't doubt it." I didn't think
about his finances. But I have a book on him now.
MASON: Yeah, [Myron] Schwartzman' s [Romare Bearden: His
Life and Art] .
WADDY: Thinking back to when I did talk to him, I know he
could afford it, but I just don't eat out. Very rarely.
It's been a long time since I-- Well, anyway. She said
71
they were so glad the letter came. A few years later she
came to L.A. for Donald's birthday or they had a little
girl or something. I can't remember. Anyway, she was in
L.A., and Donald was introducing her and her husband
around. When he got to me, she said, "Oh, no, you're the
kind who calls up in the middle of the night and you want
to stay over!" And I said, "Detroit!" She laughed, and
her husband laughed too, because that's exactly how it
happened. I can't think of Detroit without thinking of
that incident. I was making myself, you know, preparing
myself mentally to stay there in the bus station till the
morning. I said, "It's a good thing I have this coat,
because it would make a nice, warm cover." Stay here in
the bus station, you know, on the bench. Because the way
she said over the phone, "I didn't get any letter from
you. I didn't get any letter from you." That's how I did
it.
The artists-- They would show me their work, all of
it, not just the prints but whatever else they had done.
When I'd say about a piece, "It's very good" or this is
thus and so, they thought so too. They agreed. Then
they'd ask me something that an artist could answer, you
know, a practicing artist or just even a lay person. I
mean, a lay person who looked at art a lot but was not an
artist.
72
They said, "Well, how Is it that you--?" I told them
that I wouldn't know. But they'd say, "Ruth, do you think
I should have more blue in this?" or "Do you think that--?"
You know, something like that.
I'd say, "Well, I don't know."
They said, "Well, how did you get into art if you
don't know anything about it?" Oh, what they'd do is look
at me like "You're an artist."
I said, "The thing is that I have worked all my life,
and I know that anybody who is good, they worked. I don't
care even if you have talent. You still have to work. Art
is work. "
Well, they couldn't answer that. And besides, they
were so young, you know.
I said, "My daughter's your age. I have a daughter
older"-- Sometimes they were older, sometimes she was
older. I'd say, "I have a daughter older than you. Now, I
know a lot. I've been working, you know. I've been taking
care of my daughter for a long time." My husband [William
H. Waddy] and I got divorced when Marianna [Maryom Ana Al-
Wadi] was three. He was so jealous. I can't stand
jealousy. I mean, especially the kind that makes up
things.
MASON: Your husband was jealous?
WADDY: Yes. I mean, he didn't want me to go on the street
73
outside unless he was with me. And he couldn't be with me
all the time because he had a Job.
MASON: Because he didn't think nice women were out alone
on the street?
WADDY: But I had to walk the baby. He would just make
things up.
MASON: About your friends?
WADDY: What?
MASON: Was he jealous of your friends, that kind of thing?
WADDY: If they were male, yes. He said, "You don't look
at me that way." That didn't bother me so much as making
things up, just out-and-out lying. I had never run across
anybody that was jealous. It wasn't in my family, you
know, in any way. My father never acted that way.
MASON: Most women would be flattered that a man--
WADDY: Well, I didn't have anything for him — You know, I
wasn't especially-- I wouldn't scare you to death, but I
wasn't any beauty. There wasn't anything remarkable about
my appearance. It was very mediocre.
MASON: To him you were--
WADDY: Oh, I guess he thought I was worth it, I guess. I
loved him though, just the same. But that particular
thing--
74
TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
JULY 27, 1991
MASON: When we left off, we were talking about your trip
around the country to collect prints for the book Prints By
American Negro Artists. I'd like to hear more about the
trip, but we have so much to cover. I was just hoping that
I could ask you just one or two more questions and then we
can go on. Did you see Bob [Robert] Blackburn?
WADDY: Yes, indeed. He's another very, very good
printmaker. I went to his studio.
MASON: As I understand it, his Printmaking Workshop is the
oldest in the country. Could you talk about that a little
bit?
WADDY: I don't remember anything about any of the artists,
unless there was something special. I know that he is an
excellent artist and printmaker, but I didn't know how good
he was at the time. His name was given to me or I picked
his name from some book or magazine. I collected the names
of artists and asked artists for other names. I knew that
he taught school, but I don't remember any particular thing
about him except that he let me look at some prints. I
think I selected one.
MASON: I see you said you met Romare Bearden.
WADDY: Some of the artists were more outgoing than
others. He wasn't particularly so.
75
MASON
WADDY
MASON
WADDY
Romare Bearden wasn't?
No, Blackburn.
Blackburn wasn't. I see.
Romare Bearden, I think, recognized the fact that I
wasn't an artist myself and I didn't know too much about
it. But what I was doing was all right with him, and he
wanted to be in the book. But Romare Bearden wasn't, you
know, overimpressed, as some of the artists were. Some of
the artists, for instance, said — Well, they were very much
elated to have someone collect their prints to be
published.
MASON: By that time, he had pretty much made his career.
WADDY; Yes, and he was a little bit older, too. He was
older than the rest of the artists. The other artists were
mostly in their twenties and early thirties — not older than
thirty-two, at most. Most of them were in their twenties,
between twenty and twenty- five, twenty-six. But the older
the artist was, the less impressed he was, because they
knew more. That's natural.
MASON: Were you able to come to any conclusions about,
say, trends in African-American print artists during that
time?
WADDY: No. There weren't any particular ones.
MASON: Yeah, so it was just according to the people's
interest.
76
WADDY: According to each artist's. They did their own
thing. Romare Bearden was more abstract than most other
artists. Some of the artists were very much aware of the
civil rights movement, and that was depicted in their work
and their conversation sometimes. The older artists were,
as I said, matter-of-fact, just took things very matter-of-
factly. They weren't unduly excited about it, while the
younger artists were. They didn't talk about any trends,
and they didn't exhibit any particular trend. They did
what they liked.
MASON: In this same book, they included one of your own
prints. It's called A Matter of Opinion. By that time you
had taken the [Famous Artists] Home Study Course, and had
you been to Otis [Art Institute] by-- Well, you were in
Otis in '65, so did you--?
WADDY: The book came out in '67. I think maybe I had been
to Otis.
MASON: Could you talk about that, your own--?
WADDY: A Matter of Opinion is an abstract. There are
columns of different sizes and heights. I had come to the
conclusion that people very often had opinions based on
misinformation or no information or prejudice. It wasn't
fact at all. They expressed very strong opinions about
things based on those three things. So an opinion didn't
mean anything. It meant that if you wanted to know the
77
facts, you had to go and get them yourself. You couldn't
take anybody's word for it, because they couldn't give you
a factual source.
MASON: So did the different size poles — ?
WADDY: Yes, represented individual opinions. It's just a
matter of opinion.
MASON: Was that the kind of work you were doing at that
time- -more abstract?
WADDY: I don't think it was — I didn't have any
particular-- I didn't know of any other way to express that
thought . That ' s why I used abstract .
MASON: When you took the home-study course, what was that?
WADDY: It was the Famous Artists Home Study Course. Years
and years ago there were famous artists, you know. Some
company had induced different artists to make up a book,
contribute to a course, a study course, a home- study
course. Some of the artists talked about color a lot.
Some of them talked about graphics. Some of them talked
about placing things on the page. That's all I learned,
those kinds of things.
MASON: Then when you went to Otis, what did you study?
Did you study with Charles White there?
WADDY: No, his classes were advanced classes. Charles
White was good in graphics and drawing, very good, and I
was not. I never have been. Since he was very good at
78
that, he taught that, but that was an advanced class. I
only went one quarter to Otis. I think it was just one
quarter. The school year was divided into quarters at that
time, not only in the art school but at all the higher
educational institutions. I think they were divided into
quarters instead of semesters. When I started school, it
was semesters .
MASON: Yeah, maybe it's just the West Coast. They seem to
prefer quarters.
WADDY: No, I don't think so. I think that it was national
when the change was made to quarters. I don't remember the
reason that was given, I mean for changing from semesters
to quarters. I don't remember.
MASON: Why did you only go one quarter? You hadn't
formally enrolled? You just wanted to take a course? Is
that what happened? Or you wanted to continue but you —
WADDY: I didn't have any intention of graduating or
anything like that. I just wanted to take a course.
MASON: Which course did you take?
WADDY: I don't remember. Probably I just started in a
beginners course. You know, learning value and color and
how to place what you were drawing--what colors, you know,
placement . I don ' t remember .
MASON: So when did you start to — ? Is that when you
started to produce more and more work? How much--?
79
WADDY: Yes, I did more work after that because I knew a
little bit more about what I was doing. But the thing is,
the artists helped me more than anybody else, more than
anything. Artists would show me how to print and they
showed me what value meant in colors and they showed me
about graphics. For instance, the ear is placed between
the eye and the nose, not wherever I had it. [laughter]
And they showed me, you know — They taught me how to be an
artist. The artists themselves did it.
The artists when I first — In my first close contact —
For instance, when I was collecting the prints, some of the
artists would ask me, well, did I think they should change
a blue to another kind of blue that was lighter or would
add more value to the top of the painting or whatever they
were doing? I told them I didn't know, and they'd look at
me as though, "You know, all right, you just aren't going
to say." I got tired of that. That's really why I went
back to school, so that I could answer questions like
that. Because I did not know. Like the majority of people
say, "I know what I like." I liked it or I didn't like
it. I couldn't say specifically why I didn't like it, and
I couldn't say specifically why I did. I went to school
really to learn why, so that I could answer them. Because,
as I say, they were young people but they were respectful
because I was so much their senior. I was as old as their
80
mother. I could be their mother to many of them. So they
wouldn't Just come out and call me a liar, as they would
their peer probably. But they gave me that look. They let
me know that they didn't believe me. Why would a layman go
around collecting artists' work if that person wasn't an
artist?
MASON: Yeah. So did you get what you wanted out of
school? Were you able after that to articulate what you
liked and didn't like?
WADDY: I didn't initiate any art conversations, but I did
know enough if somebody asked me a question to give a
sensible answer. I didn't elaborate or anything like
that. I never did learn enough to do that, because, as I
said, I only went one quarter. I started with oil
painting. But it was to me the fact that I wasn't a good
graphic artist (and still am not, as a matter of fact) — it
interfered with what I wanted to say with oil.
MASON: Well, you were talking about this painting that you
have here called The Shroud.
WADDY: Yes, I used very big canvases because I made myself
an easel--a beautiful easel, too, strong and sturdy, and it
could roll around. But they cost too much to frame.
Prints were less expensive. The ones that I was doing were
very small ones.
MASON: When did you start exhibiting or did you exhibit
81
with the other artists from Art West [Associated]?
WADDY: Yes, if my work was chosen. We juried — Someone
would jury all the shows. I remember once Art West had a
show at the Oakland Museum or something.
MASON: Well, there was Art-West Associated North who had
the show. I think it was "New Perspectives in Black Art."
WADDY: Art West too was in that show. Samella Lewis and
William Pajaud were the jurors for us, because Art West-- I
was so proud of it, that Art West paid them their fare
round-trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We had the
work sent to the Marcus Bookstore, and they came and juried
it upstairs. All the work was juried, because I didn't
feel that there was anybody in Art West who knew enough to
jury shows, so we had an outside juror. There also
wouldn't be any politics, you know, or favorites, that sort
of thing. Although the artists in Art West became very
well known.
MASON: When did the organization break up, approximately?
Was it in the seventies?
WADDY: I don't remember dates at all.
MASON: Okay. In '65 some of your work went to Leipzig,
East Germany, or was it-- There was a print show in East
Germany.
WADDY: You know, whatever I have written down there,
that's what happened. I don't remember things like that.
82
MASON: Let me pause here for a second. [tape recorder
off] So in 1965 you got the opportunity to go to the
Soviet Union. Could you talk about your experiences there
and about how the show came about?
WADDY: Well, actually, Margaret [Taylor Goss] Burroughs
got the invitation. She wrote me a postal card and asked
me if I wanted to go to the Soviet [Union] . I told her,
yes, when were they leaving? The next time she wrote me a
letter, she told me when it was and sent me a copy of the
formal invitation from the Soviet art establishment.
Charles White had been there before, and he was the one who
suggested my name. That's how I got there. Charles White
did it. He said he'd already been there. I think the
Soviet [Union] was inviting artists of different nations to
come. Or maybe Charles Burroughs, Margaret's husband, had
been raised in the Soviet [Union], you know.
MASON: Oh, no, I didn't know that.
WADDY: That's where he was born. He spoke Russian very
fluently, of course, because that's where he grew up. The
invitation for Margaret and Charles Burroughs had been as a
couple. Margaret, being an artist herself, probably made
some kind of contact with the artists in the Soviet [Union]
the first time, you know, a few years prior to this trip
that I was on. Because I think this was about the third or
fourth time that Margaret had been over there. So when she
83
was invited-- So when the Soviet Friendship Houses invited
Margaret to bring another artist, I think she took Charles
White. He didn't want to go again, and he suggested my
going, taking his place. He said, "I've already been
there . "
MASON: He'd already had the experience.
WADDY: Yes, he thought he'd had the experience, and he
didn't want to go again. He suggested that I go, and
that's how I got the invitation from Margaret. That's why
she wrote it on a card, because on a postal card — She said
when she got back to the States she had asked other artists
in Chicago to go, but they were afraid to go because of
politics.
MASON: Well, it was a little while after the McCarthy era,
but still during the Cold War. But that didn't bother you.
WADDY: Not at all. I didn't think anything about the-- I
didn't agree with the McCarthy era. As far as the United
States being critical of the Soviet Union, you know, let
whoever is without sin cast the first stone. The United
States was not without sin herself, in my opinion. So it
wouldn't have bothered me, I don't think, because, as I
say, you have to be clean yourself before you cast the
stone. And the blacks were having a bad time in the States
at that time. You know, it was worse than it is now,
anyway, and it's bad enough now. For instance, when they
84
talk about drugs, the first thing they talk about are gangs
of blacks in the streets in urban areas. But it's the
whites, though, who use the drugs. They're the ones who
bring it in, use it, and have enough money to get cleaned
out, and enough money to buy it in the first place. It
doesn't make any difference who they are. I mean, from
medical doctors to someone receiving state aid or county
aid, some kind of public assistance rather. All of them
are white that use it. To me, you know, you have to clean
yourself, clean out your own house first, before you can
talk about the other guy's house.
MASON: Yeah, I just wondered if that was the reason why,
since the show was jointly sponsored by the Soviet
government and the American government- -
WADDY: It wasn't sponsored by the American government.
The American government didn't have anything to do with it.
MASON: Oh, I see. I thought I read someplace that it
was. Maybe it was in the article.
WADDY: No, the American government had nothing to do with
it, not in any way.
MASON: Well, that makes more sense, in a lot of ways. So
what expectations did you have? Did you have any
expectations of the trip at all?
WADDY: No. Because, as I said, I had already done A^
Matter of Opinion. Very few people had the facts, so I had
85
to go and see for myself. I didn't have any opinion of it
or any expectations. The only thing, it was exciting to
get a passport, because I had never gotten a passport in my
life. That's the first time in my life I ever got a
passport, because I hadn't gone overseas.
MASON: So did you make some work especially for the trip?
WADDY: No. As I say, I collect work. I was more
interested in getting as many artists to give me work to
take with me over there for the exhibitions in the
Friendship Houses. The Friendship Houses in the Soviet
Union are like the community houses here in the States.
It's like a community house — like galleries. They would
set up a gallery, you know, some rooms for an art
exhibit. But a friendship house itself, the building
itself, is like a community house. They're all over the
Soviet [Union]. That's where they entertain many kinds of
arts and professions, people from other countries.
MASON: So what happened when you got to the Soviet Union?
WADDY: We were assigned to interpreters, because Charles
[Burroughs] said that he was not going to use anything but
English. He said to our group that he wasn't going to use
anything but English, although he spoke and understood
Russian fluently. He was fluent in it.
MASON: Why did he say that? Because he was forgetting
things?
86
WADDY: No, because he didn't want It to appear that he was
interpreting — Because it was safer. Not safer, but in the
sense that it was more polite.
MASON: Did they have receptions set up for you to meet
people?
WADDY: They took us to travel around. I have a written--
MASON: Yeah, I saw that. Did you write this when you — ?
WADDY: When I came back.
MASON: Do you want to look at this to refresh your--?
WADDY: Oh, I could tell you this. The thing about the
Soviet [Union] that impressed me personally was the fact
that everyplace they took us they acted just the same as
the United States does when they're trying to impress
foreigners. They take them to their best places, the
prettiest, and give them the best food. They acted just as
we do. I mean, they were just the same. [laughter] You
know, when you want to impress somebody, you put your best
foot forward, as they say. Well, that's what they did.
MASON: Did you have a chance to break away from the sort
of guided program?
WADDY: No, no, because they had evidently-- Our time was
filled up with entertainment, you know, doing what they
asked us to do. We first went to Moscow, and the Red
Square was very popular then. It was very impressive,
too. The buildings were very impressive. They were well
87
built, big and well kept. It was just like if a foreigner
comes to the United States. They take him to the best
places in Washington, D.C., I guess. And they take him
then to New York at night and take them to the best
musicals. Well, they did the same thing. So, of course,
it was very entertaining and very pleasant, only it was
Russian instead of American. That was the only
difference. I noticed that their airplanes, at least the
airplanes that we were on, weren't as smooth and they
didn't operate as smoothly. They were kind of noisy. But
instead of having paper napkins, they had linen--not
cotton, but linen, a very fine linen. And the food was
delicious. The hotel where we stayed, the rooms were
huge. The bathroom was as big as this room.
MASON: Wow, that's unusual because, you know, you hear
stories about a family of five living in one room.
WADDY: Yes, well, that was true, too. I saw it. It
wasn't shown to me. It's just because if you keep your
eyes open you can see it. But it wasn't shown to you.
What was shown to us, the same thing, as I say, I repeat,
was just the best, just as we do when foreigners come over
here. We show them the best. We don't take them to the
ghetto and show the worst parts of the United States.
Well, that's exactly what they did to us when we went to
the Soviet [Union] . They showed us the best always, which
88
was very pleasant. Just like the best here in the States
is very pleasant.
MASON: Did they try to introduce other artists to you?
WADDY: No.
MASON: I mean Soviet artists.
WADDY: No.
MASON: No? Okay.
WADDY: But once, you know, in one of those cities-- I'd
have to see my notes to remember my name of it. It's like
Hollywood. That's where they make their movies.
MASON: Well, you said you went to Moscow, Leningrad, Alma-
Ata, and Baku?
WADDY: Yeah, Alma-Ata. That's the place that's like
Hollywood here. That's where they make their movies. It's
on a river. Anyway, it's in the notes. We had to take a
boat to get-- It's an island. Is it an island? There's an
island in a river. It's someplace where they mine coal,
too.
Well, anyway, on this boat was a mess boy, I guess you
would call him, a waiter, a young fellow. He started
talking to me. One of the things I noticed, too, when I
was in the Soviet [Union] was that the children spoke more
than one language. They could speak English as well as
Russian. They probably could speak another foreign
language, too, which made me think of their education being
89
superior to that of the United States, because the United
States doesn't teach its children more than one language.
That's an elective here in the States.
MASON: Yeah. Well, because the whole world has to learn
English. So, I mean, that's how, you know, in the States,
why should they go out of their way to try to communicate
with any other peoples?
WADDY: But it's easier when you can speak the language of
a country. It's easier and more pleasant for you. And
just because they speak a different language doesn't mean
that they're any different people. They're just like
you. Hot is hot and cold is cold. And they bleed red
blood just as you bleed red blood. I mean, the blood is
red, period.
MASON: Did you meet any black emigres, any blacks that had
emigrated to the Soviet Union?
WADDY: No. But this boat that we were on, we were going
to some oil, that's what it is. They had coal there.
Anyway, this young fellow said that he wanted to draw
me. I asked him if he was in art school, and he said no,
because his mother was a widow, and he had younger brothers
and sisters, and he had to work in order to help support
them. Well, at one of these dinners-- That's exactly
contrary to what we had been told, you know, at one
dinner: they always take care of their people, especially
90
the children. So he drew a likeness of me, and it was very
good. He had one or two of them, I don't remember which.
Anyway, I asked him for one, and I asked him to sign it and
put down his name and his address. He did.
The next time we had a meeting with the officials who
had planned this whole thing--the main officials--! told
them about it. Now, they knew that I only spoke English.
But when I gave them the name and address of this young
fellow and showed them his work, they were a little
surprised. I was so glad. I knew that they would be
surprised, because, as I said, all the artists were younger
than I. So they would put me in that same class. They
didn't recognize the fact that I was older and I would know
a little more, you know, about people. And I didn't think
that they were any different from Americans. Because all
people are more or less the same when you put them in the
same situation. They usually react about the same. The
difference is negligible. I knew that they would think,
"Well, she could talk about how good he was and what a
wonderful artist he was and how he should have been kept in
school and thus and so, but she doesn't know who he is."
And I wouldn't. I couldn't pronounce his name. That's why
I asked him to write it down. But that comes from being
older. Because a young person would think of that, too, if
they'd had that experience. But that kind of experience
91
comes from being older. You have to live it in order to
have it. And they were surprised. Margaret Burroughs said
that they put him back in school, and he has become an
artist.
MASON: Really? That's terrific.
WADDY: A very good one. So I said, "Well, that time I
tricked them." [laughter] They didn't think that I could,
because I don't think they had that high opinion of-- You
know, "She's a nice person and all like that, but she's not
very bright." I mean, they didn't think I was stupid, but
I didn't know their ways and I couldn't-- Everybody's way
is the same. That just comes from being here. You know,
certain things one learns just because you're here long
enough. That's all.
Well, I never will forget that incident. Also, as I
say, the hotel. The fixtures in the bathroom were
marble. The towels in the bathroom were linen. Now, you
know linen is very absorbent, and it is as absorbent as
terry cloth if it's linen not mixed with cotton. Of
course, some cotton is absorbent, too, but not as a
towel . Linen and terry are the most absorbent that I know
of. But when it comes to running hot water and machines
running, the United States was superior on machines--the
way that they run smoothly. They're just better on
machines. But the quality of the life-- It's nicer to use
92
linen napkins than it is to use paper napkins. The quality
of what we were shown was better in the Soviet [Union] .
However, the story about a large number of them living very
poorly is true, because one of the places we went was to
some very-- He must have been a very wealthy man. In the
back there were some little kind of hovels, and people
lived there. They may have been his servants. But it was
still, even for them-- The way their servants are treated,
[compared to how] domestic servants are treated here in the
States, was very, very poor. You know, more like slaves
than-- But the food that they had was fabulous.
MASON: Probably caviar and salmon.
WADDY: Yes. Lots of caviar, lots of caviar, and it was
delicious. Because the caviar was like anything else
there- -quality. And they drank a lot!
MASON: Yeah, they have that reputation.
WADDY: Gosh!
MASON: Well, it keeps you warm, I guess. [laughter]
WADDY: Well, they had furs there. What's that other
fur? It's a short hair, like mink? I can't think of it
now. [sable]
MASON: Beaver?
WADDY: No, it's like mink.
MASON: Seal?
WADDY: If I call the name you would-- People who don't
93
know the difference between mink and this particular fur
call it mink. But it's another fur from a small animal
like a mink. Gee, I can't think of the name of it.
MASON: Well, that's okay.
WADDY: No, but we were treated very well. We went to see
the movies, and we went to Leningrad. And the old stories
about Russia with the horses going up into the palaces--
The way the steps are made you can easily imagine horses
going into palaces. You know, the stage being driven into
the palace. Leningrad is a beautiful city, and they had
beautiful art museums. Oh, the museums are just fabulous
in Leningrad. Of course, the Soviet [Union] is very much
larger than the United States, about four times the size of
the States.
MASON: Was there any art you were particularly impressed
with? Was it the icons that--?
WADDY: What I was impressed with was the galleries in
Leningrad. That museum has a name, but I can't remember
that name either.
MASON: It's probably here in your notes.
WADDY: Maybe. I don't remember a lot of things about the
trip except a few incidents that stood out. I know once
when we went to see a movie, one of the guards, one of the
interpreters, he wept so. He made an apology for it, but
so many people had died there in the Second World War.
94
That was the first time I knew the reason why the Germans--
The United States were saved by the Russians coming in and
fighting the Germans. That's what saved the United States
from being wiped out--the Russians did. But they lost
forty million young people.
95
TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
JULY 27, 1991
MASON: Are there any other incidents that stand out?
WADDY: There was an African in the hotel, a young man from
some country in Africa.
MASON: Was he a student or just — ?
WADDY: He was a student, and he was raving about the
racial prejudice that was being displayed in his particular
case.
MASON: In the Soviet Union?
WADDY: Yes, in the hotel that night. He was, again, way
ahead of the Americans. You see, they didn't treat our
delegation that way at all. Whatever they were doing to
him, they didn't treat us that way at all.
MASON: What was his complaint?
WADDY: I don't remember, but he was making a whole lot of
noise about it. He wasn't talking to us. He was talking
to the offenders. That again gives you another slant,
viewing the Western civilization. Western countries,
including Europe, especially [the] English.
MASON: I'm not sure what you mean.
WADDY: By the Western civilization?
MASON: No, just in terms of —
WADDY: Racial prejudice?
MASON: Yeah. The point you were making about the
96
differences in treatment.
WADDY: The other countries are European countries- -
Western culture, that's what I should have said. Because
that Western culture includes Europe. And the Soviet
[Union] is in the continent of Europe, the European
continent. The continent. It's not a European country as
we-- Just like the United States is in the continent of
North America. It's not just North America, because Canada
is here too.
MASON: Mexico, don't forget that.
WADDY: Yes. So that gave me another view of the sameness
of attitudes of different peoples, how they treat each
other.
It was very enlightening. That trip was enlightening
in that sense. The actual-- Oh, we went to a musical that
I enjoyed very much. It was a takeoff on an American
musical. Singing in the Rain I think was the name of
that. The reason why I remember that is because the rain
was plastic strings. And the light, the stage lights,
played on the strings a certain way to make it look as
though it were raining. But it was nothing but strings.
That's what it was. But aside from that, you know, I
learned about people and attitudes from the trip. And some
of my opinions were confirmed.
MASON: Like what?
97
WADDY: Like the sameness of people. They had rich and
poor just like they have in the States, rich and poor.
Even though it was the Soviet [Union] , it still had rich
and poor. Well, aside from that, you know--
MASON: There were no political discussions and arguments?
WADDY: Oh, no.
MASON: That's probably hard to do through a translator.
WADDY: Especially if the politics were different than that
of the guest. Underneath the bottom layer of both, the
politics were the same. You know, it had different names,
but it was still the same old thing. Because, again and
again, it is let he who is without sin cast the first
stone. On both sides. It's the same old thing.
MASON: You were telling me off tape that you never saw the
show hung in the Soviet Union.
WADDY : No .
MASON: So you didn't get a chance to see what the reaction
of the Soviets was to the work.
WADDY: No, I don't know. I think that it probably was
more a political gesture than anything else. It may have
been. I don't know that, but I just suspect that. I was
glad to have gone to the Soviet [Union] . But when the time
came to go home, everybody in the party that I was in, the
delegation that I was in, was employed, and so they had to
go. The Soviets paid our round-trip ticket to the States
98
and back. We flew from where we lived. I was living in
L.A., so my plane went over the North Pole into the Soviet
[Union] --went up north first and then over into the Soviet
[Union]. But I wasn't employed, so I didn't have to go
home. So I went to Europe, I mean the other part, the
western part of Europe. But I didn't go to England. I
didn't go anyplace except Paris. The reason why I went
there was because a Parisian couple had come here. I had a
friend who knew somebody there, and they had an
apartment. They came to the States and let me live in
their apartment. That's why I went to Paris.
MASON: How long did you--?
WADDY: I also went to-- Where is the place in Italy that
has the grand opera?
MASON: Milan?
WADDY: Florence. A friend of mine was studying singing- -
opera--in Florence. I went there too, and I stayed with
her and then went to Paris. And then from Paris I came
home.
MASON: About how long was the trip altogether, including
the Soviet Union? Was it longer than a month?
WADDY: It was about a month. I remember about a month.
The whole trip, you know, including the Soviet Union.
MASON: Did you try to look at the arts in Italy and
Paris? I mean, Florence and Paris? Or was it more--?
99
WADDY: Milan. I didn't go to any other place. She had a
friend who lived in Venice, because he tried to persuade tne
to come to Venice. That's where the canals are. I told
him that I couldn't go because I didn't have any money. I
had my fare back home, but I didn't have any spending money
to travel around like that. He said, "Well, you don't have
to have any money. You're going to stay in my house with
my grandfather." You know, with his family. But going
back-- Mama [Willie Coran Gilliam] always said, you don't
go anyplace unless you have your fare back home. So that's
why I didn't go to Venice, because I didn't have any fare
back to Milan.
MASON: What were your impressions of Milan?
WADDY: Oh, it's just an ordinary city. It was just mostly
to see my friend Helen Bowman. It was just ordinary.
MASON: In your later prints, did you ever incorporate any
of the things that you saw or experienced?
WADDY: In Milan?
MASON: Either in Milan or Paris or in the Soviet Union, in
any of your work?
WADDY: No. It seems to me I did something about Red
Square. No, I didn't either. I don't remember doing
anything in particular.
MASON: So your work didn't really change, then, that much
when you came back.
100
WADDY : No .
MASON: Let me pause a minute here. [tape recorder off]
Okay, we wanted to talk about some of your prints that you
have produced, and you brought out a number of slides that
you have. You have a number of notebooks of slides, but
you just--
WADDY: You don't have to move the [projector] wheel. It
will move by itself.
That's a portrait of my mother that I copied from
another portrait, another picture I had of her. But, no,
it's this one.
MASON: Yes, this photograph here.
WADDY: I was trying to get the detail of the dress, but I
didn't do it very well. The dress shows a lot of detail.
MASON: This is what kind of print?
WADDY: It's lino. Yeah, it's lino. All of my prints are
linoleum prints.
I think that's May Day. You know, up north May Day is
very important because it's after snow. Winters up north,
the northern part of the hemisphere, they may not be as
severe as they used to be. But spring was quite a day, and
May Day was quite a holiday. Now it was summer.
MASON: So here you used--
WADDY: The Norwegians and Swedish people and people from
those countries celebrated May Day. It was quite a
101
celebration. And Minnesota is populated--it was when I was
growing up — with Swedes and Norwegians. Scandinavians, you
call them. They're from the peninsula of Scandinavia.
MASON: In some places. May Day is almost like a pagan
holiday.
WADDY: Yes.
MASON: It's a celebration of fertility.
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: Here you've used color. Did you hand-color that or
is that printed color?
WADDY: It's printed color. They have inks in color, too,
that you can use for color. It was printed color.
MASON: Did you prefer color?
WADDY: I didn't have a preference. It depends on what I
want to do.
This [slide] was in the islands, in Tobago. Again,
it's Lyming and Listening.
MASON: You explained to me off tape what lyming means.
WADDY: Lyming means rapping, gossiping. The children are
listening because there weren't very many telephones in
this particular town in Tobago in the West Indies. So news
was done firsthand. You tell it to somebody, and then
somebody else would tell it to another person. That's how
news got around. And children would report, too, what they
heard. That's why the children are standing around--the
102
teenagers. They aren't grown, because the grown people
wouldn't — If they didn't want anything to be known, they
wouldn't let the children in.
MASON: Yeah. You used children a lot.
WADDY: I like children very, very much. I like
children. I think children are very-- I think they're the
hope of mankind. Because man might not always be on this
planet. The planet probably existed without man, and it
could do so again. But if we have children and take care
of them, then he'll be here for a long, long time. And
then another thing about children, they're fresh. They
don't have preconceived ideas and ideals. They see things
clearly and plainly and state so. They talk that way, too,
if they're permitted to do so.
That [slide] is an abstract. I don't have any name
for it at all.
MASON: This appeared in [Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy]
Black Artists on Art as untitled. This was done about
1969, it says in the book. So you were just saying you
went back and forth from abstract to representational work.
WADDY: Yes.
MASON: It just depended on what you wanted to express.
Then, when you were working, did you have in mind a
particular market that you were trying to reach? Who did
you feel your audience was, when you were producing your
103
prints?
WADDY: I didn't think of an audience, because all of the
artists that I knew didn't sell very much. That's one of
the reasons why they were enthusiastic about being
published, that it might induce sales. That's the reason
why I put that ad in the paper--in the magazine, rather--to
induce sales, to encourage the artists. That's why I like
to have exhibits. We had quite a few exhibits of different
kinds. You know, Negro History Week, or somebody's
birthday. We'd do it at city hall or at a community
room. And in colleges we had quite a few shows. It was to
encourage sales. But ordinarily the sales were unusual at
that time. They weren't as common as they are now. Now
artists have sales.
MASON: When did you sell your first print? Do you
remember?
WADDY: I don't remember.
MASON: Do you remember some of the earlier sales maybe
from--? Because I noticed there were some exhibitions like
at the [Westside] Jewish Community Center, Do they buy
work from the show? Do you remember?
WADDY: No. They didn't buy any work. The fact that black
artists were exhibiting was news all by itself.
MASON: I don't want your slide to burn up.
WADDY: The Fisherman.
104
MASON: This looks like another one from the islands.
WADDY: Yes. Because fish was very important to people who
live on islands or near water — not urban people. Fish is
very important to them because it's one of their staples
for food. You know, the fish is very good, too, the way
they prepare it. They prepare it in many ways. They
usually go out early in the morning.
These are The Exhorters. This is during the civil
rights days. Everybody was telling everybody else they
should do this and they should do that. Blacks should do
this and blacks should do that. They should be thus and
so. And everyone-- Each one had a different concept of
what should be done. That's why I call them The Exhorters.
MASON: Would you say this is critical? Were you being
critical of any of these exhorters? Or were you just
stating the way it was?
WADDY: No, I was just stating the way each one has their
own concept of what should be done in the civil rights
period.
This [slide] is a self-portrait. I used to wear my
hair very short, and I would now, too, except that I don't
want to pay the barber $8 to cut my hair off.
MASON: What were you trying to express about yourself here
in the self-portrait?
WADDY: Not any particular thing. I put the squares on the
105
blouse to give it, you know, a foundation.
MASON: Yeah, it makes a nice balance and it really draws
the eye into the image. Is this the only self-portrait
that you've done, or have you done a separate--?
WADDY: Only one.
^4AS0N: That's the only one. When did you do this one,
approximately? The early sixties? I mean, the late
sixties?
WADDY: When I was doing prints, so it must have been in
the sixties, I guess. I don't know. It's been a long
time. Whenever I worked in prints.
It's a [slide of a] little boy, but I don't remember
the title. I'd have to see the--
MASON: Yeah, it looks like it's written on the--
WADDY: The children again, playing in the water with the
black and white.
MASON: So as your work went on, did you experiment with
different ways of cutting the linoleum block?
WADDY: Yes. I tried that, because you have different
kinds of knives, you know, that fit in the handle. And the
knives could determine the outcome of the picture. If you
wanted a wavy outline, then you might use a knife that has
a blade that fits into a-- I'll show you what the-- Do you
know what working tools look like?
MASON: Yeah, I've seen a few kinds.
106
WADDY: Well, you know how it fits, it screws into the
handle. I might want to use a wavy knife. But I didn't
experiment too much, because linoleum when I started was
too hard to get. They were beginning to use synthetics
instead of rubber. Linoleum was originally made of
rubber. Then they started with the synthetics coming in,
you know, make it up with a different kind of composition,
which didn't cut as well, as easily. It printed all right,
but it didn't work as well. Linoleum, rubber linoleum, the
printing linoleum, was hard to get. I think it's hard to
get now. I have a few pieces uncut that I'm saving for the
time that I'll start doing it again maybe someday. I keep
on telling myself that lie.
MASON: Are you making sketches now, or are you just--?
WADDY: Oh, I have a lot of things that I want to do. The
sketches, that's the easiest part. [laughter] No problem
at all on that. But getting down and cutting that
linoleum, that's the thing.
^4AS0N: Let me pause here. [tape recorder off] Is that
how you usually proceed when you make your prints? You
make a sketch, and then you cut out the linoleum?
WADDY: Yes, I make a sketch and use carbon paper to put it
on the linoleum and cut it, trace the sketch onto the
linoleum and cut it. Because, you see, the linoleum prints
opposite, so the sketch has to be opposite, too.
107
^4AS0N: Yeah, the reverse.
WADDY: "Reverse," that's the word.
MASON: I can't focus that [slide] any better. Can you see
It?
WADDY: Yes, I can. It seems to me it was made in the
islands. I'd have to see the title to remember the — It's
about children, at least. The reason I say it was in the
islands is because of the color, because the islands are
very, very colorful.
MASON: This [slide] is a black girl in a pink dress. Does
she have on a red hat? Is that — ? She looks like she's —
WADDY: Looks like she's walking down the road, but I'm not
sure. Let's see the title.
There's The Key again.
MASON: This was also reproduced in Black Artists on Art.
You were telling me off tape what The Key was about. It
contains--
WADDY: The key to freedom of the countries in Africa is
fighting. That's the key.
MASON: So it's specifically about Africa and not about
African-Americans .
WADDY: Yes, it's about Africa and each of the countries
becoming free. It's about a little girl who had some kind
of message to phone, but they don't have a private phone in
the house. And she's very little, because she has to turn
108
a garbage can upside down in order to reach the public
phone. It's to illustrate the children. They know how to
manipulate mechanical things like a touch-tone telephone or
to even know to telephone, to make a call. They're
inventive, creative, ingenious. She's too short to reach
the phone, so she arranges, you know, turns the garbage can
upside down or something that makes her tall enough to be
able to reach the phone. Because she feels that what she
has to say is an emergency. So she's capable of taking
care of it. Black children are often able to do that.
They're very creative if they have come across a situation
that requires some ingenuity or creativity. We aren't that
way.
That [slide] is a bouquet.
MASON: It has a lot of different colors in it. Was that a
difficult print to make because of all the different
colors?
WADDY: And because it's flowers. I was just treating a
bouquet of flowers in an abstract way, sort of. I like
flowers very much. I was just thinking of treating it as
an abstract.
MASON: Do you feel it was a successful print? I mean, to
me, I think it's very pretty the way the flowers kind of
explode out of, I guess, the paper at the bottom.
WADDY: Yes, it is. The green paper. The bottom part is
109
one of my fingers, holding it. Someone gave me some
flowers, and that's what's at the bottom — my fingers
holding the paper of the bouquet.
MASON: Okay. [That slide is] sideways.
WADDY: That's all right. Fetish is the name of that
one. I know what it is because there was a period when- -I
don't know whether it was after civil rights or not--they
were saying anything that was African to the African-
Americans was quite all right. They were taking fetishes
and all kinds of small objects, which I thought was very
silly. So that's another abstract. It's just a fetish. I
made it red because red is in the old saying, you know,
about fifty or sixty years ago-- "Red is the color that
brought you over here." Red is the color that brought
Africans over on the slave ships, they said. It was an old
saying.
MASON: I don't understand what that means.
WADDY: It doesn't mean anything. They didn't know what--
They didn't know how they-- The people who said it
evidently didn't know how Africans were taken as slaves.
But it was a saying while I was a child. I haven't heard
this now for twenty- five years, I think fifty, seventy
years ago. They'd say, "Red is the color that brought you
over here." When the colored people-- They called them
colored then. When colored people liked the red dress.
110
they'd said, "You don't want red, because red is what
brought you over here." Put you on the boat-- They gave
you some red cloth. We don't want red. But red is a good
color, and it's very good on blacks. It's very becoming to
them.
^4AS0N: Yeah, and what were you saying about African-
Americans using African objects?
WADDY : Yeah .
h4AS0N: Were you talking about artists or just the whole
trend in the sixties?
WADDY: The general public. Just a trend of the sixties.
^4AS0N: So you felt that they didn't really understand what
African culture was about. I'm not sure I understand.
WADDY: Oh, they were making a lot of noise about
practically nothing. Except if they were so African or
pro-African, well, why didn't they put their money where
their mouth was, such as join some societies that would
free some African countries or take in some African
students or something like that? Something for real.
That ' s what I meant when I said that .
MASON: It was just, you know, for a lot of people it was
just —
WADDY: Just like a fad.
MASON: Yeah. But for some people it was a really serious
thing, you know, since African history isn't really taught
111
in schools. So it was a period of self -discovery and kind
of a discovery of one's origins.
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: So do you think that was a positive thing?
WADDY: It's okay as long as you keep it in the has been,
used-to-be' s. As long as you keep it there, in the period
where it belongs. Don't make used-to-be's be's, because
used-to-be 's can't be made into be's. Used-to-be's don't
release one from the responsibility of taking care of the
be's. Used-to-be's can't fly; only bees can fly.
h4AS0N: Is this [slide] also children? I can't tell.
WADDY: I can't tell. It looks like it. I'd have to see
it. Almost is the name of that one. I know that was an
island in Tobago, because that little boy was trying to
catch a butterfly. They have the imperial butterflies on
the island. They're called the imperials. They're very
big and very colorful and very beautiful butterflies. They
don't grow everyplace. There are places that have
butterflies but never imperials. They only grow certain
places in the world. He almost caught it, but he didn't
get it quite. He was a little boy. And that diaper was
coming off too. Sometimes they don't wear any pants at
all.
MASON: Yeah, you show that in Lyming, where the boys don't
have any pants.
112
WADDY: That's Mother and Child. That's a black [Ink] and
white [paper] mother and child.
MASON: Do you remember what led you to do this particular
[slide]?
WADDY: It's The Littlest Clown, I think. And that [slide]
is my grandson when my daughter [Maryom Ana Al-Wadi]
brought him one time down to L.A. He had on a bib. I
didn't like it at all. It fit him all right and all like
that, but I just didn't like the bib. So I just did a
print of him and said The Littlest Clown.
MASON: I see. The perspective, it looks-- Did you do this
from a photograph?
WADDY: No, he was-- I had a photograph of him.
MASON: Just the whole perspective from which this is done
looks like a photograph to me.
That [slide] is completely upside down.
WADDY: That's The White Hat. It was around Easter, and
again that was on Tobago. She was going home and had this
white hat on. She was very, very proud of it. It was way
too big for her, but she was very careful of it. She was a
little girl.
That's Intermission. That's upside down too. But the
round figures coming out are people. Intermission is like
when one goes to a theater. I was likening life on earth
to a theater. It seemed as though at the time that I did
113
the print that people were in the middle. They were
confused and didn't know which way to go. Society in
general, I'm saying, the country even. They didn't know
which way to go, so they were in the middle. And the
middle was like a tomb, like a sort of death, and it was at
intermission, between acts. Like between using a lot of
synthetics and using natural things. They were between the
two.
It [next slide] is a day worker sitting in the hot
day.
I think this one is called The Red Umbrella.
The Red Umbrella.
MASON
WADDY
MASON
WADDY
MASON
WADDY
You can see a big red umbrella.
And that's just off the boat. The Giraffes.
The Giraffes. What does that mean?
It meant that we were going to talk about
immigration again, and the immigrants were trying to, you
know, settle. There's another animal in there besides
giraffes. There are two giraffes, and what's that third
animal? I don't even remember what it is. And it implied,
I was hoping that it implied, that there were Americans who
were just off the boat, too--native Americans, black
Americans, yellow Americans, Chicanes. They were just like
the others, just off the boat.
That [slide] 's an abstract. It's upside down, too. I
114
tracked different countries of Africa, and the countries
are different. One should call an African a Nigerian or a
Ghana --
Ghanian.
Ghanian?
I say "Ghanian."
Yeah, Ghanian is right. The way you're saying it
WADDY
MASON
WADDY
MASON;
WADDY ;
MASON;
WADDY ;
is correct.
MASON: Can we pause here for one second?
Sure. [tape recorder off]
You were telling me about Africa.
Yes. I think Africans should be called by the
country, as you do the rest of the continents. That's why
I made the different designs for each country, to designate
that they aren't just Africans. The same thing is being
done with Africans as is being done with African-Americans
here in the States. All of them lumped together.
MASON: But you see a lot of regional differences between
southerners and northerners.
WADDY: Yes. They aren't just Africans. The only thing
that makes them just Africans is the colonialism, and it's
still being practiced even in the so-called "free"
countries .
115
TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
JULY 28, 1991
MASON: Yesterday we were looking at slides of your work.
I was wondering if you could talk about your approach to
printmaking. I mean, your style is very direct, and it
also contains a lot of-- Well, we talked about children
being a favorite subject. Why would you say that you
deliberately pick a very direct, sort of highly readable
style?
WADDY: I don't know how to do any other. [laughter] As I
had said earlier, the artists thought I was one [of them],
and I had to learn very quickly how to do something in
art. I hadn't had any formal art training, to speak of.
And I think that I'm inclined to be direct in other fields,
I mean in speech and so forth. So I approached art that
way because that's the way I am.
MASON: So you never really significantly changed your
style.
WADDY : No .
MASON: Even the things that you're doing-- You mentioned
that you're making sketches. They're pretty much in the
same style.
WADDY: Yes, the same style. I see-- Many of my sketches
are not original. Something that I see in a magazine or a
newspaper makes me think of something. But I wouldn't say
116
that the idea was original. It's prompted by something
that I've seen. The idea is prompted by something that
I ' ve seen .
MASON: What about subject matter? How would you say that--?
WADDY: I like social issues mostly, rather than just
beautiful things such as beautiful landscapes or a
beautiful scene. I like to look at them, but I've never
felt the urge to paint or make a print of any. Although I
have seen many things that I liked, a lot of scenery,
natural beauty that I liked, and many beautiful flowers.
But I wouldn't attempt to make a print of beautiful
flowers, because I don't feel that I am that-- I'm not
skillful enough to do it.
MASON: Well, the print you showed me yesterday of the
bouquet of flowers, that was very beautiful. With your
hand holding it and--
WADDY: Yes, but, again, it was-- You know, I went to an
abstract style because I couldn't paint--draw--the bouquet
as it actually looked. Because I'm not skillful enough to
do that.
MASON: Today, how often do you take out your sketchbook?
WADDY: Very seldom. I haven't done it for years. I keep
the sketches because I keep promising myself that I'm going
to, but I never actually do it. That is, I keep the — When
I say sketches, I mean the pictures or what gives me an
117
idea to do the sketch. That's what I keep.
MASON: Like you make a scrapbook of Images. I see.
WADDY: Yes. I have a scrapbook of pictures that I've
taken out of magazines or newspapers that give me ideas,
but I haven ' t gone any farther than that . I haven ' t worked
on it- -done any printing- -for many years now.
MASON: Is that how you always worked? I know the print of
your mother [Willie Coran Gilliam] you were saying is done
from this photograph.
WADDY: Yes.
MASON: But, for example, the things that you did in
Trinidad, the island pictures, they were from life, more or
less.
WADDY: Yes, they were. Yes, they were from life. The
children playing in the water was from life, too. I don't
make many sketches from life, but there are a few I can't
escape. But there are very few. I saw that little boy
trying to catch the butterfly. That was from life. But
the fisherman was something that I didn't see then, but I
knew that that's what they were going to do. They would
say to me, "We're going fishing," and they were dressed to
go fishing. That's what inspired that print.
MASON: So what would you say was the period in your life
when you were doing the most art? Was that, say, after Art
West [Associated] broke up? I know it's sometimes hard for
118
people to--
WADDY: No, it was during the period that I was with Art
West.
MASON: I see. Let's pause. [tape recorder off] You were
saying the period while you were with Art West was the most
productive .
WADDY: Yes, when I was associating with artists. That's
when I did the most work, because they were on hand for me
to ask questions when I didn't know how to do something.
For instance. Van Slater tried to show me how to register
color. You know, after you print it, then there are
certain marks that you make on the plate. Not the plate,
but on the linoleum. You know, on the block, so that you
know where to put the colors and where to place them on the
paper. I never did learn how to do it as well as he does,
or did, rather. He was killed in an automobile accident
when he was a young man.
MASON: And you were telling me off tape why Art West broke
up, finally. There were disagreements within the group.
WADDY: Yes, they didn't like the address and where the--
They found a place that they liked on Buckingham Road. At
that time, the rents were very high, and they couldn't get
a lease, as I had had for the one on Jefferson [Boulevard],
and so eventually they ran out of money. That was while I
was out of the country.
119
MASON: When you came back, did you become involved in any
of the other art groups that had started up, like the Black
Art Council?
WADDY: No, none.
MASON: Well, not necessarily join, but did you--?
WADDY: I didn't associate with any particular group. Not
any.
MASON: Were you involved in any of the protests at the Los
Angeles County Museum [of Art]?
WADDY: Yes, I was once or twice.
MASON: What were the circumstances around that? Because
one protest was-- I'm sorry, go ahead.
WADDY: The only one was to exhibit black artists, and
there was just a march. Other than that I wasn't involved
in any other group.
MASON: Did you go to the--? There was a show in the late
sixties of African art that I understand a lot of people in
the black community were involved in. It was the Tishman
Collection. They had a lecture series also around that,
with people like Samella Lewis and Charles White. Suzanne
Jackson, I think, also spoke at the museum. Did you go to
that?
WADDY: No. No, I didn't go to any event. Although I know
those people- -Suzanne Jackson. Remember, I had a sale of
artwork, and some of my work was included at Suzanne
120
Jackson's house. She was living in L.A., but it's been so
long. It's been so long. It's a long time ago.
MASON: That was the first time you had to-- You wanted to
sell off some of the work that you'd collected over the
years.
WADDY: Yes.
MASON: That wasn't in her gallery, right? Because she had
a gallery for a while. Gallery 32.
WADDY: No, it wasn't.
MASON: It was in her house. I see.
WADDY: It was at her house.
MASON: Did you ever go to her gallery or, say, Alonzo
Davis's gallery, the Brockman Gallery?
WADDY: Alonzo Davis's, that's the Brockman Gallery. Yes,
I liked the way that he ran his gallery very much. It was
very professional. The way he conducted his art business
was that way. His brother Dale [Davis] worked with him,
too, but Alonzo was the leader. I admired the way that
Alonzo, as I said, conducted the gallery. He had special
shows. I remember he had a series of motion pictures
once. I've forgotten now what it was, but I went to each
one of them.
MASON: They were films by black artists that he had. When
did you meet Samella Lewis?
WADDY: I don't remember when, but I remember--
121
MASON: Or how or whatever.
WADDY: I was thinking about that this morning, because it
was in Los Angeles or San Francisco. It must have been in
San Francisco because Evengeline [J. "Vangie"] Montgomery
introduced us .
MASON: Oh, wait a minute. It looks like there's a-- [tape
recorder off]
WADDY: Because when I met Samella, the first thing she
said to me was, "I should have been in that book." She was
talking about [Theodore V. Roelof-Lanner] Prints by
American Negro Artists.
I said to her, "Well, I sent you a card."
She said, well, she didn't know anybody by the name of
Roelof-Lanner. Actually, she said, "I don't know any
nigger by the name of Roelof-Lanner." [laughter] I told
her that he was the one who was paying for the cards.
That's the reason why I signed his name.
So we started arguing, and Evengeline said, "Ruth, you
know all the artists, and Samella has all the scholarship,"
because Evengeline knew me before I was an artist. She
knew that I hadn't had any art training. But I knew that
the artists — She said, "Now I think that you and Samella
should do a book together." So both of us cooled down and
said okay, and that's how it came about.
MASON: This is [Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy] Black
122
Artists on Art.
WADDY: Yes. The first volume was so successful, we did a
second. It sold so well.
MASON: So there was a kind of a sort of a market for black
art then.
WADDY: Yes, there was. Samella was teaching at Scripps
College in Claremont. After the book, then she decided to
do the journal of black international art [ International
Review of African- American Art] . A magazine.
MASON: Yeah, it changed names. I think it was called
Black Art Quarterly for a few issues.
WADDY: Yes, she did. Quarterly.
MASON: How did you pick the artists for Black Artists on
Art? Did you just send postcards to everybody?
WADDY: No, I knew them by that time.
MASON: But, I mean, did you just pick everybody you knew,
or did you make a specific selection of people? Because it
includes quite a number of artists.
WADDY: I picked the ones who I thought were good and asked
them for other artists. Although, at that time, I knew
many, many artists. But as I've said many times, I wasn't
an artist and I wasn't really qualified and I knew it. So
I always asked people who I thought were qualified. Alonzo
Davis was qualified. He was teaching school, as well as
running the Brockman Gallery. Then teaching used so much
123
time, he stopped. I remember him telling me one time his
mother and his aunt said they were tired of supporting him
after he quit school to work at the Brockman Gallery.
[laughter] It wasn't called Brockman in the very
beginning. It was called something else, but I can't
remember. Brockman is his mother's or aunt's maiden name.
MASON: Yeah, because the Brockman Gallery had a sort of
core group of artists that Alonzo represented. The Black
Artists Association or something like that.
WADDY: Yes, they did, and all of them were professional
artists.
MASON: And some of those members overlapped with Art West
as well.
WADDY: Art West had professional members in it, nearly all
of them were. I was the only one who wasn't.
MASON: Oh. And how did you and Samella Lewis work
together?
WADDY: Fine.
MASON: Putting together the book. I mean, did you pool
all your artists together and then go through them
together, or did she put in some and then you put in some?
WADDY: No. I put-- Because she was working, you know,
teaching school at Scripps College. She was teaching art
there at Scripps College. So she left the artists up to
me. She, being a professional artist, would view my
124
selections and say yes and no that they were good enough.
But I don't remember her selecting any artists to go in.
MASON: Oh, I see. So she would only select some specific
pieces to go in.
WADDY: That's what she would do. But not too much of
that, either, because she wouldn't even have the time. She
had just this-- As Vangie said, she had the scholarship,
she knew how to put it together.
MASON: When you read the introduction not only to Black
Artists on Art but also her survey of black art. Art:
African-American--
WADDY: She did another book by herself. She's done two
now.
MASON: Yeah. It's gone to a second edition now. That's
used as a textbook in a lot of, well, in the few places
that teach African-American art, anyway. I was going to
say that she seemed to have really strong opinions about
art that she felt was important. That really comes
through, it seems, in the selection of some of the
pieces. They seem to be more, well, a lot of social
commentary. I don't know if I should say the word
"militant" or whatever.
WADDY: Yes, I was that way, very much so, but so was she
when I first met her. Because Scripps College is not a
place where a militant would be.
125
MASON: I can't imagine.
WADDY: But I was, because I wasn't working, so, of course,
I could afford to be. I mean, if i were a professional, as
many of the people whom I knew were, well, maybe I would
have been that way, too. But since I was on the other end,
you know, one of the have-nots, I was in the have-not group
of people. Art Seidenbaum said I was in that group, but I
didn't associate — I associated with people who had more
than I did and had better jobs and a better education,
better everything. I just seemed to gravitate towards
those people and that kind of people. But I didn't lose my
anger and militancy, though, because I did. I tried to
make them that way too or tell them why I was that way,
point things out, you know, situations out to them to
illustrate it. I've been that way all my life, I guess.
MASON: In what other ways do you express that kind of
militancy? You talked about being involved in the march
against the Los Angeles County Museum. Were there any
other marches or protests that you were involved in?
WADDY: Of marches and protests, I have been involved in
very few, maybe two at most. That kind of militancy
doesn't appeal to me because it doesn't resolve anything.
It just says, "I don't like it," but it doesn't resolve
it. Now, if it were the kind of militancy that we aren't
going to trade there or they aren't going to get our
126
business, now that kind I'm interested in. But just to
march around, that leaves me cold. I want some results.
That's why I liked Chicago, because in Chicago the blacks
would get together and they got results. They did
something that resolved it. And that's what I was hoping.
MASON: Did that ever happen in Los Angeles?
WADDY: Not to my knowledge.
MASON: Well, we finally got the California Afro-American
Museum established.
WADDY: Yes, and it's state-funded. It receives some of
its funds from the state, that's true. That's one. That's
a result. I agree with you on that. That's the kind of
result that I'm talking about. There were others, too, in
Los Angeles. Art West had a show in city hall, downtown in
L.A., and it was written up in the Los Angeles Times. The
Los Angeles Tribune. The Times or the Tribune, which is
their leading paper?
MASON: Well, the Times now, but maybe then it was the
Tribune.
WADDY: It was the same paper. I think the Times. Because
it was the first time that there had been an exhibit. It
was either Martin Luther King [Jr.]'s birthday or during
Negro History Week, because there was one painting that was
causing controversy because of its militant stance.
MASON: What painting?
127
WADDY: And Johnny Otis used to be a--
MASON: Oh, really?
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: He used to be —
WADDY: A member of Art West.
MASON: Oh, really? [laughter] That's right, I think I
heard him say on the radio once that-- He'd sort of
denigrate-- I've never seen any of his work, but he said,
"Yeah, I try to paint or draw sometimes."
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: Oh, I see. Whose painting was it that caused--?
WADDY: I don't remember. But that's why it got in the
Times . That ' s how it got in the Times .
MASON: So this must have been in the early- -
WADDY: I wish I had the minutes of Art West, because it
would have had something in there about the date and the
artists who participated.
MASON: Does anybody have the minutes or have they just
disappeared?
WADDY: I don't know who has them.
MASON: But you think somebody might have them? There's
always somebody who collects those things.
WADDY: I was trying to think of the members, which one
would be the secretary.
MASON: Let's see, was Raymond Lark?
128
WADDY: Yes, Raymond Lark was. Lark's a good artist. And
he heard about-- Art West was known not only in San
Francisco but other cities, too. Because some artists from
other cities said that they'd heard of Art West. Or I
think that the advertisement-- I don't know how they heard
of it, though.
MASON: And you were also saying yesterday that-- I wanted
to ask you about artists like P'lla Mills and Alice Gafford
and Beulah Woodard, who were actually active in Los Angeles
in the 1950s. You were saying that Alice Gafford was a
part of--
WADDY: Art West. She was a member also.
MASON: So it seems like there was a large range of--
WADDY: In ages and talent, especially talent, because I
was in there! [laughter]
MASON: And you said that Miriam Matthews was also a
supporter of Art West.
WADDY: Oh, yes, she was a supporter of art.
MASON: Did their — ?
WADDY: Art West was definitely an influence on public
recognition of black artists. Two or three people became
collectors during that period when we had shows. And, of
course, we always invited this particular-- I can't
remember who they are. But I know that two of them were
doctors. Miriam Matthews was a supporter. She bought art,
129
too.
MASON: Yeah, well, Leon Banks is usually a name--
WADDY: Banks, that's the man. Yeah. That's one of
them. Isn't he a doctor?
MASON: Yeah.
WADDY: Yes. I think that black art- -artwork by black
artists- -has become stronger as the years have gone by.
MASON: How do you mean "stronger"?
WADDY: That people buy it.
MASON: I see. That the market has opened up.
WADDY: Yes, yes. Because the resale of their work is
very, very high.
MASON: But not compared with white artists, though.
WADDY: Not, no, but almost. For instance, it's not quite
as high but almost. It is not in the millions yet, but
it's in the hundreds of thousands. Some artists get that
much. For instance, Romare Bearden did.
MASON: Yeah, but, I mean, his work isn't as costly as,
say, Jasper Johns's.
WADDY: It's almost so.
MASON: Do you think that that's a good thing- -to have a
larger market for black art? Or do you think that because
there may be a large market for a certain kind of art, then
that would maybe adversely influence the kind of art being
produced, because people might be more inclined to work
130
with the mind that, "Well, I have to take the edge off my
art because I want it to sell, I have to make it less
militant"?
WADDY: No, not any more than the artists did before there
was a market. Some people are just very sensitive to the
market, and some people are not. The market comes to them,
rather than them going to the market.
MASON: Yeah. David Hammons is probably an example of--
WADDY: Now, hold on. I don't call $250,000 a poor
example.
h4AS0N: No, no, I was just saying he seems to be somebody
who has always followed his own instincts.
WADDY: And he will, because there were some members in Art
West who were teachers, for instance, like Alonzo Davis.
He was one of the early members. When he started the
Brockman Gallery, then he resigned from Art West and
started his own group. But people like that who are
teaching school or who had some kind of employment and did
artwork, too, David Hammons at one time didn't think very
much of them. He liked Roland Welton, for instance, very
much better, because Roland Welton was an artist and that's
all he did.
MASON: I see. So if you can't make a living from your
art-- I see, he has very high standards.
WADDY: Yes. I remember him expressing that years and
131
years and years ago, and I don't think he's changed that
much. His art is salable, but it's because the public has
become enlightened. He hasn't bowed to the public. And I
don't think now it's likely to change at all, because
you've got to plead your own-- Very, very few people learn
that.
MASON: Did you see a show at the museum, I think it was in
the seventies, with Charles White and Timothy Washington?
You didn't?
WADDY: Timothy Washington is another good artist.
f4AS0N: How did you or when did you or what were the
circumstances around your friendship with Noah Purifoy?
WADDY: He was a coworker first. That's how I got to know
him.
MASON: You were both-- That was the job that you had
screening patients.
WADDY: Yeah, we were working in the same-- All of the
admissions workers were in one huge room. Each one had a
desk, and the client would come to the desk. That's how I
became acquainted with him.
MASON: Both of you being interested in philosophy, you
must have had a lot to talk about.
WADDY: He was a do-it-yourselfer. He fixed his house on
La Brea [Avenue] when he lived on La Brea. I think it was
a garage or it was some little house in the back that he
132
got for very cheap rent. He fixed it up and made it very
attractive. And there was another young man by the name of
John Wilson who lived with him. John Wilson is an
architect or he's in the art — He was in the art field but
not the same, not fine art. He and Noah worked together,
and they introduced music when they had an exhibit at the
Home Show in Los Angeles. It was the first time that music
had been used, the very first time. It was written up in
the Times, too.
^4AS0N: You mean it was used as part of the exhibition?
How was music--?
WADDY: It was used-- You know how when they are-- It
wasn't an art exhibition, it was an exhibition of what they
had to offer. You know, like it was business. It was a
business. The Home Show is a business show. Once a year
or twice a year L.A. used to have the Home Show downtown in
that civic building. Have you heard of the Home Show?
MASON : No .
WADDY: They used to have one where you could buy home
appliances and there were decorative gardens. It was like
a convention, but it was called the Home Show. It went on
for a few days in the civic center. The reason why it was
written up in the Times is because the music attracted
crowds to their booth.
^4AS0N: Was it jazz? What kind of music?
133
WADDY: I don't remember. I don't know. I had the
newspaper article for a long time. I saved it, but I don't
have it now. I don't know what I did with it. That was
the first time that it had been used at booths at
conventions, and after that it was used a lot. But they
were the first ones: John Wilson and Noah Purifoy. John
Wilson lived on Windsor Boulevard in L.A. It was between
Wilshire [Boulevard], close to Wilshire, between Wilshire
and Olympic [Boulevard]. He died. I can't understand all
these young people dying.
^4AS0N: Do you own any of Noah Purifoy 's work? Because we
were talking yesterday about the piece by--
WADDY: I have a poster of Sir Watts. I think I still have
it. I think it's under the bed with all this stuff. Sir
Watts was a wonderful piece. It's a beautiful piece. It
was from the riots, after the riots. He had found a mesh
lady's bag, evening bag, and that was one thing that was on
the-- It was the statue of a man from the waist up. It was
quite a masterpiece made of junk material, and he made some
posters of it. I got two of them. I framed one. This
[indicates] is something else. This other, this large one
with the most wood, it's the farthest to the right.
^4AS0N: Those are two pieces of melted neon from "66 Signs
of Neon."
WADDY: Well, the one with the biggest, most wood? That's
134
Noah's. And this one is Judson Powell's.
MASON: How long have you had those two? I mean, did you
get them right after they had toured?
WADDY: After I started going to Noah's house often. I
went to Noah's house lots of times, and he'd come to
mine. Noah did this table. I got the wood, but Noah made
the frame. I wanted it made out of two-by-four, and he did
that when I was in L.A. He did that for me.
I said, "How much will it be?"
He said, "I'll let you know later on," or something
like that.
I said, "I'd rather pay now."
MASON: Yeah, before inflation. [laughter]
WADDY: Yes. But it was some kind of favor of his. He
didn't charge me for it. This was my printing table.
That's when I was printing then.
MASON: Yeah, it's nice and big and sturdy.
WADDY: Yeah, it's heavy. That's that weight-- I used that
piece for a weight for printing. You know, the one that
holds the door open?
MASON: Yeah.
WADDY: That's what that iron is, too, that I have down
here. Because it has to keep-- If you register or lift it
from the print, the print has to stay on the block in the
same spot or else it will ruin the prints. So it has to be
135
heavy.
MASON: Did you ever try assemblage yourself? Did you ever
experiment with assemblage? It seems that just because,
you know, you're around it with Noah Purifoy, I was just
wondering if it ever attracted you.
WADDY: Assemblage?
^4AS0N: Yeah, like Sir Watts, using junk, junk sculpture.
WADDY: No, no, no. I was a do-it-yourselfer, but it had
to be something that I wanted to use and I couldn't afford
to buy. That's the kind of do-it-yourselfer I was. But
Noah was an artistic — He was an artist. He fixed the
yard, and he made a table out of little pieces of hard
wood. When I say little pieces-- A table top.
136
TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
JULY 28, 1991
WADDY: When I say little pieces, I mean about two inches,
two or three inches long, and about one inch wide. He
fitted them together to make a table top. He did things
like that. Well, see, I never did anything like that.
MASON: When did you begin to--? Did you buy many works
that weren't prints or start to collect art outside of
prints at any time?
WADDY: Oh, yes. But I actually didn't buy hardly any art
at all. When I got the prints for American Negro Artists,
the artists gave me pieces. I would just keep them until I
could frame them and hang them. But I don't have them now
because I couldn't hang them, you know, where I live [in
senior citizen housing] . Except on Western Avenue, I think
I could hang anything I wanted to there. And also, I
didn't want to put them in storage, because I was afraid I
might lose them. Because many years ago, when I was about
in my, oh, I'd say between fifty and sixty years ago,
probably longer than that--oh, I guess it's about that
long--I lost some things in storage, because I didn't pay
the storage bill. I mean, when I lost it, it was because
the storage bill wasn't paid. I didn't have enough
money .
MASON: Do you think that the art groups that we've been
137
talking about helped to or tried to formulate what might be
called a black aesthetics, which is kind of a nebulous
term, but some people might define it as a particular
approach to art that might be recognizable as African-
American? Do you think that anything like that could exist
or did exist or should exist?
WADDY: No, I don't think it did, because African-Americans
are just like other Americans, generally speaking. Or,
specifically speaking, each person has a different approach
to everything. You know, each person is distinctive, we'll
say-- I'll say. And, no, I don't think there should be,
because I don't think there is a specific need for it. I
think that gradually black American artists will be
accepted as black Americans are accepted in other fields.
MASON: And that's just because people will know more about
the artists the more exposure they get?
WADDY: Yes, and their art is shown in black American
homes. Black American homes don't show-- I mean, white
American artists.
h4AS0N: You say black homes don't show white artists?
WADDY: No. But black artists appeal to those people.
Otherwise Alitash Kabede couldn't sell. She's an art
dealer in Los Angeles. You couldn't sell if they didn't
want to buy black American artists' work. And she makes a
living at it, which means they buy quite a bit. They pay
138
whatever the going price is--the market price.
MASON: Yeah. Well, some whites will buy so-called "blue
chip" artists like Romare Bearden or Charles White. So,
you know, the market might be more mixed.
WADDY: Oh, yes, the market is very much mixed, because she
sells more than Bearden and White.
MASON: When scholars talk about a black aesthetics,
sometimes they use-- It seems that they are trying to
refine it lately to talk about a kind of blues aesthetics
and trying to make a parallel really between blues music,
which is a distinctive kind of music, and sort of saying,
well, if we look at black visual arts, then there must be
some kind of parallel that might have some roots in
southern folk culture and things like that. But you don't
see anything like that?
WADDY: No. Now, artists' work to me is just as varied as
any other aspect of American art. What scholars are saying
that? Are they artists?
MASON: The blues aesthetics? Or the black aesthetics?
WADDY: Either one. Are any artists saying that?
MASON: Well, David [C] Driskell talks about a black
aesthetics, and he's a scholar, or I should say he's a
scholar/artist. But usually it's really intuitive.
WADDY: David Driskell is an artist?
MASON: Yeah.
139
WADDY: I have never seen any of his work. I know he's
considered a scholar.
MASON: Well, yeah. He does oil painting, but usually it's
really harder to define in the visual arts. There's a
professor now. Rick [Richard J.] Powell. He's a young
professor, graduated from Yale [University] . He talks
about a blues aesthetics in art, and he's also a
printmaker.
WADDY: He came from the wrong school.
MASON: Oh, what's wrong with Yale? [laughter]
WADDY: It's Caucasian. That's what's wrong with it. So
he's been trained rather than thinks. Those are training
schools, Yale and Harvard [University], but they aren't
thinking schools. Some schools specialize in training
people. Of course, they don't call it training, but that's
actually what it does. It trains you and programs your
mind a certain way. It doesn't let you think.
MASON: Well, there's another, a literary scholar who came
also out of Yale, whose work has been really influential,
named Houston [A.] Baker. He talks about a blues aesthetics
in literature. He seems to find a certain commonality
between certain works, different themes, like repetition,
and, I can't think of some of the other things, but, you
know, things that are found in blues music. His work has
been really influential, and it seems to be convincing.
140
WADDY: It's influential among what group?
MASON: Well, among black scholars as well as white
scholars.
WADDY: Black scholars.
MASON: But, well, artists. You know, they probably just
do what they want to do without, you know, trying to--
WADDY: Well — [laughter]
MASON: Why are you laughing?
WADDY: It makes me think of what I told my daughter
[Maryom Ana Al-Wadi] when she finished her bachelor's
[degree]. I wanted her to go on. No, I don't know-- She
didn't have it. She was going to [Los Angeles] City
[College] to get a degree. I don't know whether it was--
She hadn't gotten a bachelor's yet.
She said, "It's nothing but a piece of paper."
I said, "I agree, that's all it is. But that piece of
paper opens the door . "
And she said, "Yes."
That's what I was laughing about. Some of the people,
some of the graduates, don't let the degree go any further
than just being a piece of paper. Of course, one has to be
trained, but too often I think that schools train you not
to think. Because people who think are usually upsetting
the status quo or ask questions that might upset the status
quo, even their own. And thinking is not particularly
141
easy, either.
MASON: It takes a lot of time and effort.
WADDY: Yes, it does. And honesty. And honesty is not
particularly trained in any school. I mean, that's not one
of the things that they train one in. But everybody to his
own notion. As I said, it's "a matter of opinion."
MASON: So through your involvement in the arts and your
own work you have been receiving honors and awards since
1963, approximately. Let's see, in 1963 you got an award
from the National Association of College Women. What was
that for? Do you remember?
WADDY: I think it was just because Art West was going and
had been started or something like that. Although it
wasn't the first time artists had gotten together, maybe it
was the first time it was more inclusive, for some
reason. I don't know. Because it certainly wasn't the
first time there was a black artists' group in Los Angeles,
I know that.
MASON: Do you know how they found out about your work or
why they were interested in art? It seems like kind of a
general- -
WADDY: Yes, it was more to arouse African- Americans '
interest in the work of black artists. That was really the
purpose of Art West. To tell the public that they had
among them artists whose work was worthy of being bought.
142
that would give pleasure to them — pleasure to the buyers, I
mean, enhance their life.
MASON: And then in '86 — [tape recorder off]
WADDY: Maybe the fact that we got so much publicity was
because I wasn't so much of an artist but I could get
artists together. Maybe so, because everybody, every one
of them, was better than I was.
MASON: You got an award in '64 from the Los Angeles YWCA
[Young Womens Christian Association] . You got one from the
National Conference of Artists.
WADDY: Oh, the National Conference of Artists, that was
interesting. I think that was because it was the first art
group in L.A. I don't know why. Art West may have gotten
a lot of publicity from the members. As I said, in the
beginning it may be because there was somebody who could
get artists together who wasn't really, truly an artist.
At least, they were very much better than I.
MASON: Did you attend a lot of the National Conference of
Artists' meetings?
WADDY: Yes, because I wanted to be associated with
artists. I liked them. I like artists. And Margaret
[Taylor Goss] Burroughs was the head then, and I knew
Margaret Burroughs from Chicago.
MASON: Do you remember any particular meeting that was
exciting to you? Because they met in different parts of
143
the country.
WADDY: Yes, they did.
MASON: Sometimes in Florida, I think, and Chicago, I know.
WADDY: And then Georgia, Atlanta. West Virginia is one
place I remember. I remember that because — [tape recorder
off]
MASON: So you were saying that —
WADDY: Bill [William H.] Waddy came from West Virginia,
but I don't remember the town in West Virginia. I don't
remember the name of it.
MASON: I see you got an award from Compton College in
1972.
WADDY: We probably had a show there.
MASON: And one from Art West in 1972.
WADDY: Yeah, I'm sure we had a show in Compton. The one
from Art West they couldn't decide what to do, so I got a
plaque with a bronze-- Here it is. They said in Art West--
I remember one of the members, and I can't remember who it
was, he said, "We couldn't decide what to do about you,
Ruth. We would have planned that each member would say
what you had done for each member individually." But I
don't remember all that stuff, because, firstly, that's not
the way I do things. I mean, I do it just because I can do
it. It was needed, and I can do it. That's all.
MASON: But still, it takes a lot of energy and dedication
144
and interest.
WADDY: I mean, the person needs it. You see, if
everybody's doing well, then that means I'm doing well. So
I'm very much interested in everybody doing well. Because
that helps me. That's what makes it good for me. That's
why I think it's so silly for people-- Why can't they see
that? It's how you elevate yourself — you keep everybody
else up. Since you're just like them, that helps you. I
mean, that's to your benefit. That doesn't mean —
I remember one artist, I forgot her name. She had
some children. She said to me, "Don't you remember when
you did that?" Well, I didn't do that for them. She had
some children, and they needed something, a thermos
bottle. I had two thermos bottles, thermos jars or one of
those things.
MASON: Yeah, like for lunch boxes.
WADDY: Yes, lunch, that's right. She had some children,
and she wanted them to take something warm. And she asked
me, "Don't you remember when you gave me the thermos?" I
had two of them, and I can't use but one. So that helps
me.
MASON: Many more people have the opposite attitude--the
more they step on other people, the higher they go.
WADDY: That's just a contrary. They're working against
themselves. The old saying is charity begins at home. You
145
take care of yourself first and then you spread it
abroad. Well, that's how you take care of yourself.
That's exactly how you take care of yourself. Treating
other people as you would like to be treated doesn't have
anything to do with ethics--that ' s good business. That's
just plain, good conunon sense. It hasn't anything to do
with being right or ethical or any of that. It's just
plain good business. See that everybody else is up and
you're up, because you're just like everybody else.
Well, anyway, I don't know what they-- I got up there
and said, "Thank you, " you know.
MASON: Oh, I see. We'll pause here. [tape recorder
off] So here's your plaque from Art West.
WADDY: Yeah, that's it.
MASON: It says, "This conunemorative plaque is presented to
Ruth Waddy, 1972, for outstanding national and local
conununity service to art, artists, and mankind. Art West
Associated, Incorporated. Los Angeles, California."
That's very nice. Well, if you hung up all your plaques,
you wouldn't have any room for your art, so it seems like
you've made the choice to hang your art in your apartment.
WADDY: Yeah, because at least I know why I did it. At
least I can say that there's some reason for all of the
honors. I think they kind of ran out of people.
MASON: Oh, come on. Well, what was your award from the
146
Los Angeles City Council, 1979? Do you remember? And
there was the League of Allied Artists in 1981. And
also an award from the California Afro-American Museum
in 1983. In 1986, you got the Vesta Award from the
Women's Building. Had you been involved in the Women's
Building?
WADDY: Oh, yes, yes. I can remember that because it was
so kind of far out.
MASON: How so?
WADDY: I mean, in my mind it was. Mary Jane Hewitt had
received one, and she told me something about Vesta and
what it stood for. At least I didn't feel too strange
accepting it, because I knew that one black American had
received one. Mary Jane Hewitt is an African- American.
MASON: But you hadn't been involved in the Women's
Building before, though?
WADDY: I think that they just tried to get someone from
each ethnic group in Los Angeles. I think that might have
been it.
MASON: So it was more of a public relations ploy than
anything else.
WADDY: Yes, yes. And, of course, the Women's Building
would have liked it if more black women would be involved
in it.
MASON: Well, wasn't Samella Lewis involved?
147
WADDY: In it?
MASON: To some degree.
WADDY: Maybe so.
MASON: Because I know she was involved-- Well, I read that
she was involved in that group of artists that organized to
protest that art and technology show at the Los Angeles
County Museum [of Art] , called something like the Los
Angeles Women's Art Council or something like that. And I
think Betye Saar had a show there. But yeah, I guess maybe
between black women and white women there were too many
conflicts to resolve.
WADDY: Yes, there are.
MASON: Their outlook was too different.
WADDY: Yeah, Betye Saar had a show. I can remember that.
MASON: And then you got in '87 an honorary doctorate of
fine arts from Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of
Design of the New School for Social Research in New York
City. Can I read the inscription?
WADDY: Sure. [tape recorder off]
MASON: This is the citation from the Otis Art Institute.
It says, "Ruth Waddy, painter, printmaker, advocate of
artistic opportunity--"
WADDY: That's the main thing that I wanted. That's the
main thing.
MASON: Okay, well, that's first. "Your strong graphic
148
images strike us with aesthetic, emotional, and social
power, and your dedication to seeking out the distinctive
experience of black artists in America has widened that
power. You have been a prophet exclaiming the news of
black artists and calling upon the world to embrace them.
If not for your efforts, artists now prominent would have
remained obscure, thus denying us the vision and insight of
their work. As art reveals the freedom of the human
spirit, you have expanded freedom's boundaries for artists
themselves and for us all. Otis Parsons of the New School
for Social Research is honored to confer upon its former
student the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa.
May 14, 1987."
WADDY: It's amazing. I want to-- People are, you know,
they're wonderful animals. They're wonderful.
Wonderful. But they don't let themselves be that way.
^4AS0N: How so?
WADDY: They let other people train them, which is all
right, after they think, after they think. The training is
essential, you know, for the performance of a job or a
profession or whatever. It's essential. I recognize that,
or at least I think I recognize that. I know it's
important. If people would just be people, you know, just
be themselves, they'd be really wonderful. They're good,
too. You know, like war — You don't like that. They
149
really don't like it. But they let themselves be led by
the nose this way and that way. It's stupid. They're
dumb! [laughter] That's why they're trained, so they
won't be themselves. Because they'd upset a whole lot of
customs and governments and taboos. If man stays on earth,
he will eventually be that way, because that's the only way
left, you know, the only way left.
^4AS0N: You mean, to be unconventional and to go against
the--
WADDY: Yes, to be themselves — good. To be their natural
selves.
MASON: Well, some people would say in the sixties there
was some of that.
WADDY : Yes .
MASON: Do you think that will reemerge eventually?
WADDY: Oh, it wasn't resolved in the sixties. We just had
hints of it. It wasn't resolved. Nothing was resolved,
because the majority of the people were trained. I think
man is essentially a good animal.
MASON: So what — ? You said you had a problem with this
question, but I'll ask it anyway. Looking back on your
life and your career and your involvement with the arts,
what makes you the most proud today?
WADDY: I have as much embarrassment as pride. In having
started Art West and knowing so many artists, I am both
150
proud and embarrassed, because I feel so lacking in a lot
of ways. I'm the same kind of animal as I say about man--
you know, dumb too. [laughter] I'm dumb too. I could
have done better. if i had just had my eyes open and
thought. Well, hindsight being better than foresight, I'm
not particularly— i can't think of a particular thing.
That's all.
MASON: Okay. I just have one final question. What kinds
of things have you done to preserve the record of your
activities over the years? We were looking through some of
your notebooks here in your apartment of the slides, and
some of your papers you've given to the Amistad Research
Center in Louisiana. Have you gathered together scrapbooks
and things like that? Not really, no.
WADDY: But I think that this talking to you makes me think
that I should do it.
^4AS0N: Yeah. [laughter] Art historians would really
appreciate that.
WADDY: Maybe I will. If I get two or three days in a
succession that I feel good, maybe on the fourth day I
might start it. Usually if I start something, I'll finish
it, usually. Although I can think of my failings better
than I can of my successes. For instance, when I started
Waddy Shower Cap [Company] , I was trying to prove that you
can become wealthy without charging a whole lot of money.
151
But I didn't charge enough. I charged a little bit over
the wholesale cost to me, a very little. But when I took
it to the retailers, they raised it a whole lot.
f4AS0N: Yeah, they usually double it on principle.
WADDY: Oh, four or five times, at the best stores, like
Saks Fifth Avenue and Robinson's and I. Magnin. They
bought the cap maybe at $12 a dozen and sold it at $60.
They charged a whole lot for each cap.
MASON: How did you come up with the idea for that?
WADDY: Oh, because my sister Gladys [Gilliam Little] and I
had accepted a whole lot of social invitations, you know,
to very nice places, and we hadn't returned them. We
had been trained. Mama, as I told you, loved to entertain
but thought that when you're entertained or when someone
entertains you, you return that invitation by inviting
them. Gladys and I hadn't done that. So I said to Gladys,
"We'll have a big party and have a caterer and door-to-
door--" What is it when you go up to the door and somebody
takes your car and brings it back for you?
MASON: Oh, valet parking.
WADDY: Valet parking. And she said, "Well, where are we
going to get the money?"
I said, "Well, I'll make something, and we'll sell it,
and we'll get the money that way."
She said, "Okay."
152
And so I made the shower cap.
Gladys is a very good judge of things that she sees.
Finally, I got one that she said, "Oh, that's a good
cap." So she said, "I'll do the selling," because she is
better at selling than I. But she doesn't like hot
weather; she can't stand heat very much.
So the first store she went to was Robinson's, and the
buyer ordered a gross. The buyer said, "I'll try it out,
and I'll take a gross." Well, I didn't even know what a
gross was. [laughter] I found out it's twelve dozen.
And I said to Gladys-- I was making it at home, you
know. I have an example of a cap. I'll show it to you
after a while. So I got the gross out.
The next week the buyer asked for two gross--the very
next week! I said, "What on earth! I can't afford
that." I realized I finally had to get a place where we
didn't make anything else but caps. I did that by going to
city hall and getting a zoning variance so that I could
work across the street. It was a vacant place on Venice
Boulevard. I rented some machines and got enough
supplies. Then I found that I really had to charge more
than I was for the wholesale price, because at that time
buyers went in retail stores and then got the name of the
wholesaler and contacted the wholesaler. So it got to go
around the country and I couldn't fill the orders. So I
153
had to hire some seamstresses. That meant that I had to
have more money. [laughter] But they were making such
good profit, they wouldn't accept the higher price. I
wrote a letter trying to explain it, but that went out the
window.
Those are the kinds of mistakes I'm talking about.
Like that one about that Mr. Green giving Art West the
land. Now, if I had-- That's all I had to do. Just stake
it out and make everything exactly at a right angle, every
corner a true right angle. I already knew that, but I
wasn't thinking. Those are the things that I'm talking
about when I say I can think of my mistakes better than I
can anything else. Those are the first things that come to
mind when you mention something to me, not pride, but that
you didn't do this or you did that. That's what comes to
mind. You don't have anything to be proud of. You
remember you should have done that. Maybe you should have
done the other. Those are the kind of things that come to
my mind.
MASON: We have a few more minutes left on the tape. Is
there anything you would like to add?
WADDY: Well, I think it's a great honor to have an oral
history.
MASON: It's a great honor for us to have you participate.
154
INDEX
Al-Wadi, Maryom Ana
(daughter), 11, 30, 31,
33-34, 47-48, 73-74, 113,
141
Amistad Research Center
(New Orleans), 151
Art West Associated, 57-60,
82, 118-19, 124, 128,
129, 142-43, 144, 146,
150, 154
Art-West Associated North
61, 82
Baker, Houston A., 140
Bearden, Romare, 71, 75-77
130, 139
Black aesthetics, 138-41
Black Art Council, 120
Black Artists on Art, 103,
108, 122-23, 125
Blackburn, Robert, 75-76
Bontemps, Arna W. , 29
Bowman, Helen, 100
Brockman Gallery, 121, 123-
24
Brown, Richard, 55-57
Burroughs, Charles, 83, 86-
87
Burroughs, Margaret Taylor
Goss, 25, 27, 29, 51, 63,
83-84, 92, 143
California Afro-American
Museum, 127, 147
Carver, George Washington,
41-42
Catlett, Elizabeth, 29
Clack, George, 52
Compton College, 144
Davis, Alonzo, 121, 123-24,
131
Davis, Dale, 121
Douglas Aircraft Corpora-
tion, 30-31, 35-38, 42
Driskell, David C. , 139-40
Edwards, Mel, 52
Famous Artists Home Study
Course, 77-78
Federal Writers Project,
23, 25, 27
Fergerson, Cecil, 56
Gafford, Alice, 129
Gilliam, Elijah (uncle), 4
Gilliam, Henry (uncle), 5
Gilliam, Jane (aunt), 4-5
Gilliam John Moses
(father), 1-2, 4, 5, 10-
11, 12, 34, 74
Gilliam, Willie Coran
(mother), 1-8, 9-12, 13,
14, 17-18, 28, 100, 118
Green, Helen, 58
Hammons, David, 131
Hare, Anne Gilliam
(cousin), 4
Harrison, Margaret Gilliam
(sister), 2, 7, 9, 10,
30-31, 32
Harrison, Sinclair
(brother-in-law), 30
Haynes, James (brother-in-
law), 30, 34
Hewitt, Mary Jane, 147
Hill, Evans, 39-40
Hill, Tony, 39-42
Houston, Norman 0., 55-56
Jackson, Suzanne, 120-21
Johnson, Daniel LaRue, 42,
48, 51-52
Kabede, Alitash, 138
King, Martin Luther, Jr.,
50, 61
Lark, Raymond, 128-29
League of Allied Artists,
147
Lewis, Samella, 29, 82,
103, 120-25, 147-48
155
Little, Gladys Gilliam
(sister), 2, 6, 7-8, 9,
11, 42, 48, 51, 152-53
Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation, 19-20
Los Angeles County
Hospital, 11, 42-45
Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, 51-52, 55, 120,
126, 148
Matthews, Miriam, 129-30
Montgomery, Evengeline J.,
61, 67, 68, 122, 125
National Association for
the Advancement of
Colored People, 12
National Association of
College Women, 142
National Conference of
Artists, 63, 143-44
National Endowment for the
Arts, 58, 60
Oakland Museum, 82
Otis, Johnny, 128
Otis Art Institute, 77-79,
81, 148-49
Pajaud, William, 82
Parker, James, 62-63
Parks, Gordon, 3
Porter, James, 63, 68
Powell, Richard J., 140
Printmaking Workshop ( New
York City), 75
Prints by American Negro
Artists, 61, 75, 122, 137
Purifoy, Noah, 132-37
Roelof-Lanner, Theodore V.,
61-65, 122
Saar, Betye, 62, 148
Safety Savings and Loan
Company, 52
Seidenbaum, Art, 126
Slater, Van, 62, 119
Smith, William E., 62
Southside Community Arts
Center, 25, 27, 62
Southside Writers Group,
24-25
Stinson, Donald, 69-70, 72
Stone, Irving, 21
Stone, Jean, 21-23
Tann, Curtis, 69-70
University of Minnesota,
12-13
University of Southern
California, 61, 64
Waddy, Ruth G. ,
--works by, 77, 81, 85,
102, 104-5, 108-10, 112,
113, 114
Waddy, William H.
(husband), 19, 73-74, 144
Waddy Shower Cap Company,
151-54
Washington, Timothy, 132
Welton, Roland, 131-32
Westside Jewish Community
Center, 104
White, Charles, 23, 26, 55-
56, 78, 83, 84, 120, 132,
139
Wilson, John, 133-34
Women's Building, 147-48
Woodson, Carter G. , 26
Works Progress
Administration, 23
Wright, Richard, 23-25
Young Womens Christian
Association, 143
156
{./fV/
Live Music
Archive
Librivox
Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland
Museum of Art
Internet
Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American
Libraries
TV News
Understanding
9/11